LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



Shelf ...kmr 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



Service in the King's 
Guards 



BY TWO OK THEM ^ ^ K's^S^ 

OTttf) an Sfntrotmction 

BY 

REV. WALTER M. BARROWS, D.D. 

LATE SECRETARY OF THE AMERICAN HOME MISSIONARY SOCIETY 



IP 14 1891 ' 

BOSTON AND CHICAGO 

Congregational ^untiag^cljool anti ^ubltsfring £orietg 




A* A 



Copyright, 1891, by 
Congregational Sunday-School and Publishing Society. 



J 



TO THE PATRIOTIC AND CHRISTIAN 

PEOPLE OF OUR COUNTRY, 

WITH ALL 

WHO ARE PRAYING 

THY KINGDOM COME, 

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

BY 

THE AUTHORS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Dr. Joseph P. Thompson, in one of his London 
addresses, said: — "No page of history presents a 
record of more silent, patient heroism or more self- 
sacrificing patriotism than the all unwritten, unpub- 
lished lives of the teachers and missionaries of the 
west." 

That the lives of so many of these faithful workers 
have been unwritten is doubtless due to the fact that 
they have been too busy in making history to stop to 
write it. Now and then a letter will appear in a 
missionary magazine or paper giving to the world a 
glimpse of their frontier experiences. But never 
before, to my knowledge, has such a full and graphic 
record as that contained in this volume been pub- 
lished. It appears to me that the writers have suc- 
ceeded admirably in catching and photographing the 
ever-changing aspects of life in a new country. 

As one of the secretaries of the Missionary Society 
under whose auspices they labored, it was my privilege 
not only to carry on a correspondence with the writers 
of this book, but to visit them in the new territory 



6 Introduction. 

which was their field of work. I can vouch for their 
fidelity and success as Christian missionaries, and for 
the truthfulness of their story. Bat all who read this 
record of "Service in the King's Guards" will need 
no other witness than that found on the pages them- 
selves of the consecrated spirit of the writers. 

Their narrative will entertain by its charm of style 
and its freshness of incident. But unless it does more 
than this — uuless it arouses the patriotic and Christian 
people of our country to a sense of their responsibility 
to render help in building up the new communities on 
Christian foundations — it will not serve the purpose of 
those who have Tiere written this faithful account of 
frontier experience. 

WALTER M. BARROWS. 



PREFACE. 



The experiences here chronicled are not written because 
of any exceptional value they are supposed to have. They 
resulted from service undertaken in much weakness, with 
no extraordinary expectations, but, it is believed, with an 
eye single to the glory of God and the good of man. 

No experience but that which came to us naturally and 
unsought is related. With the omission of many incidents 
which might have been narrated, had time and space per- 
mitted, this is the simple story of about three years, set 
down for the most part in chronological order. 

The need — long felt and urged by those who have a 
wide outlook over the whole field — of bringing into closer 
touch the hearts and minds of those who pray and give at 
the east and in the interior, and the daily lives of those 
who pray and toil at the west, has led to this endeavor 
faithfully to portray the experience of one home missionary 
family, as a humble contribution to this end. 

"Tell us just how it is out there" has been an oft- 
repeated request. For this reason, small details have been 
given, as well as glimpses of the larger aspects of life. 

Doubtless other tales of missionary life, many of which 
must remain forever unwritten, far outweigh these, both in 
hardships attendant and good achieved. In all such good 
we do and will rejoice. 



8 Preface. 

No apology is offered for the introduction of scenes 
among the Indians. All missionary work is, in reality, 
one. It was on the border-land of so-called home and 
foreign missions that our appointed field of duty lay, for 
the most part, and we have given some of the glimpses we 
were privileged to gain, in the prosecution of our work for 
the white men, of far more toilsome and self-sacrificing 
work for the red men. 

With devout thanksgiving for the privilege of following 
the standard of our great Captain, we offer these campaign 
reminiscences to our comrades in the army of the Lord, 
commending all failures to the forgiving mercy of our 
divine Leader, and with the prayer that he may condescend 
to use this narrative as an instrument of his glory. 

The Authors. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Call and the Journey 11 

II. The Reception and the Outlook IS 

III. Beginning Housekeeping. — The Blizzard . 26 

IV. Getting Settled. — Our Hymn 37 

V. Among the People 44 

VI. The First Communion. — Our Sunday-school. 

— A Journey 48 

VII. The First Funeral 57 

VIII. The Schoolhouse. — New Friends. — The 

Church 62 

IX. A Neighboring Church 69 

X. Summer Diversions 73 

XI. Temperance 80 

XII. Our First Meeting with the Indian Mission 93 

XIII. Another Field. — Our Church Home . . . 10S 

XIV. Thanksgiving. — A Young Visitor. — Our 

New Surroundings 118 

XV. Forefathers' Day 128 

XVI. Our Literary Society 131 

XVII. Difficulties 145 

XVIII. The Parsonage 151 

XIX. Immigration. — A Journey in the Opposite 

Direction. — Frontier Life 157 

XX. A Frontier City . 163 

9 



10 



Contents. 



CHAPTER 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 

XXVI. 

XXVII. 

XXVIII. 

XXIX. 

XXX. 

XXXI. 

XXXII. 

XXXIII. 

XXXIV. 

XXXV. 

XXXVI. 

XXXVII. 

XXXVIII. 

XXXIX. 



XL. 
XLI. 

xlii. 



The Daughter. — Sitting Bull. — Preach- 
ing at the Fort 169 

Aspects of Nature. — Extremes. — A 

Tornado 175 

Our Fourth of July on the Indian Reser- 
vation 180 

Outside Missionary Work 186 

Ration Day at and near the Agency . . 192 

Visitors and a Visit 199 

A Meeting of General Association . . 209 

Getting into the Parsonage 223 

A Visit. — Missionary Boxes 233 

Thanksgiving. — Christmas. — Improve- 
ments 242 

A Funeral on the Indian Reservation . 254 

Incidents of the Winter. — A Revery . . 261 

Missionary Raids 272 

Revivals 281 

A Promising Beginning 285 

By the Way 295 

Forty Miles and Two Churches in One Day 301 

Autumn Meetings 306 

u Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
of the least of these my brethren, ye 

have done it unto me" 317 

Three Days Together 324 

A Song. — - A Mirage 334 

Multiples 340 



Service in the King's Guards. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CALL AND THE JOURNEY. 

TT was a case of relativity'. There was enough 
-■- to do, and the calls to duty were abundant in 
our chosen field in New England. But the workers 
were more numerous in the east than in the west. 
Above all the din of battle around us came the cry 
from the rapidly opening fields of the far West : — 
" Come over and help us." So urgent had it be- 
come that it seemed too serious a matter to be un- 
heeded. Into that broad land the tide of humanity 
was setting. New towns were springing up all along 
the rivers and the projected railroads. Shall they 
be supplied with Christian institutions, or left to 
the seeding and harvest of sin? From the office of 
the secretaries of the Home Missionary Society in 
New York came the message : " You must be needed 
more at the front than where you are ! " 

"We can go, as many cannot," said the husband 
and father. "We have not a family of young 

11 



12 Service in the King's Guards. 

children to bring up on the frontier, far from the 
influences we should crave for them." Our only 
son was in college. Our only daughter had reached 
the time when she needed to pursue her education 
away from home. The mother hesitated. The 
daughter was still young, and to leave her in New 
England, while we put half the width of the continent 
between us, was to make a heavy sacrifice of feeling. 
" God will take care of her education," said the 
husband. To go was literally to leave it with God, 
for the salary of a home missionary could not educate 
the children away from home. 

The calls were repeated. A correspondence with 
the secretaries of the Missionary Society ended with 
a promise to go, on the part of the minister. He 
left the selection of a field with the authorities. 
The most needy at that time was said to be a village 
of promise six months old, on a railroad. Letters 
came from the clerk of the infant church there and 
the Sunday-school superintendent, answering a few 
questions, and leaving others unanswered. For the 
rest, we would find out by going. 

The time came when a resignation, carried for 
weeks in the minister's pocket, must be presented. 
It came upon the people unawares. They appointed 
a committee to seek its withdrawal, promising to 
" arise and build," if the minister would remain, and 



TJie Call and the Journey. 13 

asking what they could do that they had not done. 
Our hearts ached for them and for ourselves at the 
thought of parting. But there were many men who 
could be found for that field. There were not many 
who could and would go to the front. The call of 
duty must be heeded, cost what it might. So we 
prepared to go. 

What should we take ? What should we not take ? 
It was midwinter. Our beautiful window plants went 
first, to gladden other windows in the parish. Our 
windows seemed vacant when they were gone, but 
they were windows where we had often lovingly 
watched the outlook. There was the hill, where a 
forest of firs made a Gothic cathedral with their tops 
outlining exquisite spires and buttresses against the 
clear evening sky. There was the distant moun- 
tain range, where, through the long hours of many 
a summer day, wonderful lights and shadows had 
floated in transparent, immeasurable calm, and where, 
as the sun sank in the west, gloom had gathered in 
the vast gorges, while their ridges were bathed in 
sheen — ridges with rose-pink ledge and gleaming 
waterfall, ridges gray with granite, or green with 
unfading forests. Along those summits floated mem- 
ories of winter days when the mountains had seemed 
like pyramids of glittering marble. There had been 
days when the battlements of the New Jerusalem 



14 Service in the King's Guards. 

seemed to be shining in our horizon ; when a casual 
glance heavenward would bring an uplift of spirit to 
be remembered a lifetime, or touch the hidden spring 
of " thoughts which lie too deep for tears." 

From crimson and purple and gold, shell-pink and 
amber, blue and silver, we must turn away to the 
practical side of life. 

The preparations for moving were made and the 
good-bys were all said. The farewell was taken of 
the pleasant home, its double parlors, high walls, 
wide piazzas ; and of the outlook over mountain and 
valley which we knew no other would ever rival. 
Toward the church we could not so much as look. 
It was too dear, and the fountain of tears was too 
ready for an overflow. 

We had accepted the cordial invitation of a friend 
in Chicago to bring our daughter there for study. In 
an elegant city home, with devoted friends around 
her, and with many privileges, we left the young 
girl, glad in the thought of her opportunities, and 
remembering that Chicago was not quite a thousand 
miles east of our destination, instead of the two 
thousand which separate it from New England. 

The first twenty-four hours on the train which sped 
out from Chicago went pleasantly. We were in the 
Pullman car where our friends had bidden us good- 
by, and sights and sounds were agreeable, except 



The Call and the Journey, 15 

that, as we reached the edge of Wisconsin, an early 
March storm of wind and snow recalled for a few 
hours all we had ever heard of " blizzards.'' But 
Minnesota was more propitious, with mild weather, 
and snow all gone. As we traversed the central and 
western portions of the state we identified the various 
localities described in that wonderful book, " Mary 
and I," which we held in our hands, rehearsing mean- 
while the toils and self-denials of the elder Riggses. 
How much greater their sacrifices for the Indians than 
ours could be, forty-five years later, for the white men 
who had taken possession of these ancestral hunting 
grounds ! Our train wound along the valley of the 
St. Peter's River for a time, and we had ample oppor- 
tunity to admire the landscape and the stream, while 
at the same time trying to realize how it had looked 
here when in its primeval wildness " Mary and I" had 
spent a week floating on the river between Fort Snell- 
ing and Traverse des Sioux in a barge propelled by 
five Frenchmen, " sometimes paddling and sometimes 
pushing, and often wading to find the best channel 
over a sand-bar." Leaving the river, we struck across 
the country which the Riggses, on their way to Lac- 
qui-parle, had found a wide wilderness, with no sound 
but that of the occasional flight of a bird of passage, 
now dotted with villages and the comfortable homes 
of farmers. 



16 Service in the King's Guards. 

The progress of the second day from Chicago 
showed us plainly that we were " out west." Our 
Pullman car was left behind, and we were in a 
crowded, untidy coach, where men, women, and chil- 
dren spent the day and night, the floors and seats 
covered with the litter of continual lunches ; the 
atmosphere burned up by a red-hot stove, and per- 
fumed by the breath of many tobacco-users, who 
sometimes smoked until the air of the car was blue. 
People were not particular " in the west," we learned, 
to restrict smoking to the smoking car, and remon- 
strances to the conductor were of no avail. Loud 
conversation, sometimes sharp and witty, sometimes 
stale and unprofitable, or a revealer of personal and 
family affairs, echoed from one end of the car to the 
other. We were not disheartened, for we had ex- 
pected little better. Two or three books abstracted 
our attention, and when tired of reading we studied 
the country from the car windows. As yet, there 
were no faintest hints of springtime. The great tree- 
less plains stretched away, league upon league, cov- 
ered by long, dry grass, bleached and bent by departed 
snows. The last day of our journey was more ab- 
solutely featureless than a day in mid-ocean, where 
sometimes a dolphin or flying fish leaping up out of 
the waves, and a smokestack or sail of passing vessel, 
enliven the way. Hour after hour passed without the 



The Call and the Journey. 17 

sight of tree or bush, bird or man, and the long, dead 
prairie level broke into no waves for our diversion. 
Sometimes, at a station for refreshment, we would 
seek a cup of tea or coffee ; but good food was only to 
be found in our Chicago lunch-basket, and the throngs 
of immigrants who rushed from the second-class cars 
of our long train at every considerable stop needed 
the change and the walk upon the platform far more 
than we did. 

Acquaintance with fellow-travelers was easily made, 
but there seemed to be little call for sympathy. Nearly 
all were cheery and hopeful, as why should they not 
be, when they were bound for the land of promise, 
and in the glow of its first excitement ? This last day 
was to us one of falling mental barometer. The deso- 
lation of hundreds of miles of primitive prairie, with 
the sparse new settlements looking even more forlorn 
than uninvaded nature, conspired with the physical 
weariness of the journey to give us the instinctive 
feeling that we were on a strange planet. 

And yet the bright heavens above, the solid earth 
beneath, Christ and the promises, are the same old 
friends we have known amid other scenes through the 
passing years. " Lo, I am with you alway ! " What 
can we want besides ? 



CHAPTER II. 

THE RECEPTION AND THE OUTLOOK. 

IT was after dark before we reached our des- 
tination, where we were met at the little 
station by two pleasant, kindly faced middle-aged 
men and a lady. One of the men took us in his 
open buggy, a mile across the prairie, to his home, 
which, he said, was to be ours until we could make 
one. The wife and young daughter gave us a 
cordial welcome, and the tempting supper which 
awaited us had been daintily prepared by their own 
hands. 

It was a home of two small rooms. One was 
kitchen and dining room ; the other, sitting room, 
parlor, library, and sleeping room. Here were books, 
cabinet organ, plants, pictures — an amazing array 
of refinement for a frontier cabin. As bedtime 
drew near, the question of where we were all to 
sleep was to us an unsolved problem. There were 
in the room a double bed and a small single one. 
But here were five persons ! 

At last the little girl was nicely tucked away in 
her narrow bed ; the host and hostess bade us occupy 

18 



The Reception and the Outlook. 19 

the other, and closed the door between the two rooms. 
We did not think it best just then to ask many 
questions, but we never did quite know how the 
good man and his wife got through that cold night. 
We were glad to find them alive and cheery in the 
morning. 

Refreshed by our good night's sleep, we eagerly 
looked forth in the morning for the first sight of our 
new parish. Our eyes followed the waving of the 
dry grass and the frozen hollows of the prairie, till 
we espied in the distance one long, low building of a 
London-smoke color. Another, of a smart drab, 
stood beside the telegraph line and the railway track, 
and a third, near the second, black as a Russian 
dungeon, was covered, we were told, with tar paper. 
This was the nucleus of the nebulous village. These 
buildings were, respectively, the lumber depot, the 
railway station, and the ''section house," which, of 
necessity, accompanies the laying of a railway track 
along unoccupied country, for the housing and feeding 
of the railroad hands. Two small white houses, not 
far from the station, formed the aristocratic quarters ; 
two or three stores and the remainder of the homes 
were in rude, unpainted structures, some of which 
were mere cabins, and some promised to assume the 
likeness of houses if ever paint and chimneys should 
come to their aid. 



20 Service in the King's Guards. 

One of the two friends who met us at the station 
the evening of our arrival was the village doctor, 
who, with rare thoughtfulness, brought his wife, that 
the minister's wife might not feel so much alone 
among the crowd of men, while waiting for the team. 
The stranger asked how many inhabitants the village 
contained. The lady did not know. Still intent 
on gaining some idea of the situation, the ques- 
tioner thought of five hundred, but, designing to put 
the guess low enough, asked if there were as many 
as three hundred. She " thought not," and the sub- 
ject was dropped. The following Sunday the doctor, 
with a humorous smile, brought up the question. 

"My wife and I have been counting up," he said, 
" and we think that within a radius of a mile from the 
station there must be eighty-five persons." 

And this was the promising village of which we 
had been told, while still in our New England home, 
that it had a weekly paper, a flourishing literary 
society, and an organized "board of trade," as well 
as a Sunday-school and a full-fledged church organi- 
zation, with a good subscription for a church edifice 
which would soon be built ! The church membership, 
to be sure, was only eight ; but there were others who 
would join, if a pastor could be secured. We now 
found that of these eight church members, good and 
true, two — our host and hostess — lived a mile from 



The Reception and the Outlook. 21 

the station, and the other six were in a community on 
the prairie, five miles away. 

The situation was not what we expected, though 
our expectations had not been high. The church 
must be built and maintained at the village ; its short 
roll-call must be made to reach far out on the almost 
trackless prairie. But we were there for a purpose. 
We had come to honor the King, and to help the 
people. We were still in the world's great harvest 
field, and our work was before us. The first inquiry 
was for a place in which to hold the Sunday morning 
service. " We hold our Sunday-school in the depot, " 
said our host, who was the superintendent; " there 
is no other place for it." Of course, then, that was 
the place for the new preaching service. They had 
already read sermons there, and the railway author- 
ities were willing. 

Sunday morning we drove to the station, but with 
no sound of church-going bell. The four or five 
settees, which on a week day were ranged about the 
small room, were placed one before another on one 
side. Eight before them was a great, rude coal- 
stove, larger and higher than a man. The table of 
the telegraph operator had been brought from the 
little side office room and placed on the other side of 
the stove. A soap-box was turned upon the table 
for a pulpit and covered with a spread, by the fore- 



22 Service in the King's Guards. 

thought of our hostess. About thirty men, with a 
few women and children, gathered in for the service, 
those who could not be accommodated by the settees 
finding seats on boards supported by inverted nail- 
kegs. During our devotions some stray engine or 
" wild" train went thundering by ; but we were not to 
be diverted, even when a few boys and men went from 
the outskirts of the little congregation to the greater 
excitements of the platform. The sermon had to be 
preached with the red-hot stove between the preacher 
and his audience, but he stood first on one side, and 
then on the other, talking familiarly and looking full 
in the faces of those before him. When a gospel 
song and the benediction had brought the service to a 
close, the Sunday-school immediately took what form 
it could. The superintendent and his wife were the 
only teachers. All the men and women who stayed 
were in his class, and all the boys were in her class, 
leaving the girls, as the least important element of the 
school, to be supplied by chance. 

We remained for the opening exercises to help sing 
and give a word of cheer. Then, after dinner at the 
doctor's, we drove out to the schoolhouse on the 
prairie, where the second service was to be held. It 
was a low, unpainted structure. Forty men, women, 
and children were gathered within, interested partici- 
pants in Sunday-school exercises, when we entered. 



The Reception and the Outlook. 2$ 

They listened very eagerly to the sermon which fol- 
lowed, and gave the new minister and his wife a most 
cordial welcome afterwards. The drive over the 
prairie, both in going and returning, was a series 
of experiments in finding trails, trying frozen mud- 
holes, and crossing miry places. The reins were in 
the experienced hands of the village Sunday-school 
superintendent, who went for our guidance and intro- 
duction. There were, of course, no fences, and the 
few "claim shanties" along the way seemed all 
exactly alike. Way marks, to uninitiated eyes, there 
were none, and we had a feeling of great uncertainty 
as to whether we were on the right trail, as well as 
serious doubts as to whether the horses would be able 
to pull through the sloughs, or stick fast in hopeless 
struggles to find bottom in bottomless places. 

The few days following were passed in fruitless 
inquiries for a house to live in, but without incident, 
except the receipt of a letter informing us that our 
household goods, receipted by railway officials in New 
England four weeks before, were not yet shipped, 
owing to a new rule of the " Grand Trunk," which 
necessitated the prepayment of all freight bills. This 
involved a visit by the minister to a bank, the nearest 
many miles distant, and delayed our hope of getting 
settled, even if a house could be found. 

In the evenings, our inquiries brought out tales of 



24 Service in the King's Guards, 

experience in a new country, which we were eager to 
hear. The winter of the year before, the first since 
white settlers came in, had proved very severe, the 
snow falling to a considerable depth, accompanied by 
frequent blizzards. Further railroad construction 
was stopped, and trains were blocked on the portion 
that was in running order. For one hundred and 
eight days there was no communication with the out- 
side world, except by distant telegraph. The climate 
had been supposed to be mild and open, and there 
were few supplies of coal and groceries in the terri- 
tory, the small dealers expecting to replenish their 
stock by rail from time to time, as need might be. 

Some families were so fortunate as to have milch 
cows, or a little pork and a few potatoes on hand. 
These fared comfortably during the first two months 
of the snow embargo. Others had little food of 
any kind ; but there was some wheat which had 
been raised the summer before. This, ground in 
coffee-mills, was the sole food of many a large family, 
sometimes without even the addition of salt. One 
hand must needs be kept "grinding at the mill," all 
day, and every day of those weary months, in order to 
prepare the u graham " meal which supplied the mush 
"or breakfast, the water-biscuits for dinner, and the 
griddle-cakes for supper. If people were well, they 
thrived on this monotonous fare ; if delicate, or dys- 



The Reception and the Outlook 25 

peptic, the suffering was very great. One lady, whom 
we afterwards knew, put her last teacupful of sugar 
aside, for use in case of sickness, in so safe a place 
that she was not able to find it for several months. 
Hay was the only supply of fuel. The long, dry grass 
was cut in autumn, twisted into bundles after the 
fashion of a skein of yarn, and about the size of a 
medium stick of stove- wood, and piled up near the 
homes in quantities thought to be sufficient for the 
mild winter expected. The fearful cold in the wind- 
pierced shanties soon made great inroads on this pro- 
vision, and the deep snows rendered it impracticable 
to cut more. Long before the need was over, many 
families had burned their last shred of hay. With no 
timber in the country, they were compelled to choose 
between freezing, and tearing up their floors and every 
other board that could be spared from their rude shel- 
ters before the blockade was ended, and the welcome 
trains could bring wood and coal. 

These were the tales, coupled with stories of prairie 
fires, which served to while away the odd hours of the 
first few days, while we were waiting and hoping to 
find a place for a home. Meantime we were made 
cordially welcome by the large-hearted hospitality of 
our first shelter. 



CHAPTER III. 

BEGINNING HOUSEKEEPING. THE BLIZZARD. 

jnvURING- the alternations of hope and doubt 
attendant upon our search for a house it had 
been suggested that perhaps we would prefer boarding 
to housekeeping. Where could we board? In a 
frontier "hotel" consisting of two unplastered public 
rooms below ; and one unfinished chamber above, 
divided by curtains of rag carpet into apartments 
where all the guests must sleep ! A crust of bread 
under a board shelter by ourselves would be riches 
in comparison. So we prayed and watched and 
waited. Soon the glad news came that one of the 
best houses in the place was to be vacated immedi- 
ately, and we could have it. That joy was very 
great. On the strength of it we went across the 
prairie to make some calls. As we returned, in the 
double-seated open buggy, with our kind host and 
hostess, the "village" appeared, on a long, gently 
swelling elevation to the west, a point of view we had 
not obtained before. " There," said the minister, " is 
our house." The wife looked eagerly. For a moment 
her heart sunk. An unpainted shell, of one story — 



Beginning Housekeeping. 27 

only not a shanty, because the diminutive roof sloped 
both ways, and with a slender stovepipe projecting 
through the top ! She remembered her pleasant 
eastern home, and thought of the two-story brick 
parsonage with its acres and its orchard, from which 
they had turned away ; and the unbidden words 
flashed upon her consciousness, " Have I come to 
this ! " She was silent, but in another moment she 
smiled, and soon the vivacious conversation had 
flowed safely past these " shallows," or "deeps," in 
its stream. Not afterward was the struggle of that 
instant repeated. We were missionaries in a new 
country, where all except earth and sky was to be 
made. We had come with a fixed purpose to take 
things as we found them, and make them as much 
better as we could. 

Two or three times that week some lady asked, a 
little doubtfully, " Do you think you can live there? " 
With unfeigned cheer the missionary wife was en- 
abled to answer, that what was sufficient for others 
was sufficient for her, and that she had no doubt we 
should be comfortable. The house was vacated on 
Friday, and then it needed to be cleaned. The grimy 
dust of the soft coal used for fuel must be washed 
from the unpainted boards of the interior, and the 
stains of prairie mud from the floor. It was five 
o'clock Saturday afternoon before it was dry enough 
for us to enter. 



28 Service in the King's Guards. 

Our hospitable host and his wife had striven to 
make us comfortable with utmost success, except 
that they could not hide from us — as they tried to 
do — that they were sleeping in an attic only three 
or four feet high in the highest part, in order to give 
us their comfortable bed below. We much desired 
to begin our housekeeping, even at this late hour of 
the last day in the week. A good second-hand cook- 
stove had fortunately been found for sale, and the 
minister had purchased it, and also a few hundred 
pounds of coal — all, or nearly all, there was for sale 
in the village. He had also sent twenty-five miles 
to the nearest place where a bedstead could be bought, 
and it had already arrived — cheap in aspect, but 
not in price. We placed it in the little attic chamber 
of our house, whose foundations were twelve by six- 
teen feet in dimensions. Under the highest pitch of 
the roof only could we stand upright, and here the 
bed was " organized. " On the wooden slats we laid 
the provision for our comfort, which some of our 
kind parishioners had contributed from their own 
scant} 7 stores until ours should arrive. There was 
a tick filled with wiry prairie hay, pillows, a pair of 
warm gray blankets, a quilt or two, sheets and pillow- 
cases. How luxurious it all seemed, to be under a 
roof we could call ours for the time, and to be setting 
up our own bed with such a comfortable outfit ! The 



Beginning Housekeeping. 29 

two or three trunks we had brought with us were 
stowed away under the eaves after they had been 
relieved of a part of their contents by hanging our 
clothing on nails driven into the rafters. Newspapers 
were pinned up to the little six-paned sashes, one 
in each gable, which gave us light and air ; and the 
stovepipe, rusty with rains which had streamed down 
its sides, went valiantly up from below, through the 
middle of the room to its escape at the ridgepole. 
Access was had to this chamber by a steep and 
crooked stair in one corner, down which one seldom 
went without a dizzy feeling. 

So far all was well. That prime necessity, sleep, 
was provided for. By singular good fortune, a young 
man, who had brought a little washstand bureau, a 
wooden rocker, and six common wooden chairs, was 
willing to lend them to us until he could build his 
own shelter for them. By the generous thoughtfulness 
of our hostess a small round table and a little strip 
of hemp carpet from her home were brought to 
grace ours. These furnished our living room, with 
two chairs to spare for the chamber. A fire was 
started in the cook-stove, and thus we began our 
home. To be sure, there was neither food nor dish 
in the house ; but we would take our meals for a few 
days in the "hotel/' not far away, until we could 
purchase the necessary outfit for meals at home. 



30 Service in the King's Guards. 

So we came, with song of praise and thankful prayer, 
to our second Sunday's work. Service again in the 
waiting room at the station, and to a larger congre- 
gation than before. The wife remained to take the 
girls' class in Sunday-school, and the minister went 
alone to his afternoon appointment on the prairie. 
As the afternoon waned, the wife looked from the 
cabin window, watched, waited ; but the minister 
did not return. As the long twilight was deepening 
into dusk she reluctantly went alone to the hotel 
for supper. She sought the landlady and apologized 
for being late by saying that her husband had not 
returned, adding that she supposed people did not 
get lost on the prairie so near to a town. t; Indeed 
they do — plenty of them!" replied the landlady. 
But they hoped it was not so bad in this case. When 
the wife returned, the minister was at home, safe and 
smiling ; but he had been bewildered on the prairie, 
where one square mile was like every other, and 
had lost much time in consequence, though not so 
much as to spoil his service. 

There was no evening service in the village, for the 
depot was wanted for other uses. So we two sat 
beside our cook-stove, read at our borrowed table 
by the light of our borrowed lamp, behind our news- 
paper window curtains, and, as bedtime approached, 
chatted cheerily, resolving not to write our eastern 



Beginning Housekeeping. 31 

friends anything about our domestic surroundings, 
the knowledge of which would only distress them, 
since they would feel our discomforts, while there 
was really much alleviation which they could not 
be made to see. After evening devotions we re- 
tired early up our steep stair, and slept in peace. 

Monday morning we took our breakfast with the 
miscellaneous company at the hotel table, came home 
and sat down before the stove ; for the morning 
was cloudy and chilly. Little did we suspect that 
we were about to learn the meaning of a word we 
had seen in prict, without the smallest apprehension 
of its meaning. There was a gray, leaden look in 
the heavens. The stillness of the atmosphere was 
oppressive enough to be a warning to the initiated, 
but was scarcely noticed by us, as we were planning 
for the week, for parish calls and work, and for the 
immediate purchasing of food and dishes. 

Suddenly there came a blast of wind which shook 
our roof and shrieked through our stovepipe, shrill 
and fiend-like as the vicious swoop of a destroying 
eagle. The house trembled and creaked as the 
awful blast struck it. Another and another came in 
quick succession, whistling, wailing, roaring, howling. 
We glanced at each other and out of the windows. 
Fine particles of snow were swirling in the air, and 
we knew that a blizzard was upon us. Already our 



32 Service in the King's Guards. 

frail tenement was shaking continuously as in an ague 
fit, and its foundation was as slight as its structure. 
In the grip of that relentless fiend of the air, we 
felt that our house might at any instant be crushed 
like an eggshell, and that, if it could hold together, 
some of these gusts must send it tumbling over and 
over like a weed before the wind, far across the 
prairie. The air was now so thick with snow that 
a house twenty feet distant was invisible. As noon 
approached, the question of food and water was 
discussed with interest. The minister took a pail 
and groped his way toward a railroad ditch, some 
ten rods distant, where soft water could be dipped 
up, a nearer well yielding water so hard that the 
addition of soap converted it into a milky, greasy 
fluid unfit for washing. He returned with about 
half the water blown out of his pail and his clothing 
a sheet of ice. " It is useless,'' he said to his wife, 
" for you to attempt to stand before the wind. I 
will bring your dinner." He took a little tin pail 
with a cover, which we fortunately possessed, went 
to the hotel, a few rods away, ate his own dinner, 
and brought food to the wife. She found a little 
package of tea brought from Chicago in her trunk, 
steeped some in her one tin cup, and partook of 
her first meal in her new home with mingled thank- 
fulness and fear. 



Beginning Housekeeping. 33 

As the clay wore on, the gusts seemed to increase in 
severity, — if that were possible, — and the uncertainty 
of our untried position we keenly felt. In the thick 
darkness of the early evening the wife ascended to 
the chamber and lay down upon the bed, to ascertain 
by experiment whether rest would be possible there 
for the night. A brief trial convinced her that no 
rest was to be had in that attic. Its walls of thin 
boards seemed like the curtains of a paper tent, as the 
wind roared and raved about them, and the shrill wail 
iu the stovepipe was varied only by shrieks that 
seemed both human and inhuman. The bed shivered, 
trembled, rocked, and that apprehension which comes 
of not knowing how much worse the situation may be 
was hardest of all to bear. Unspoken terror would 
drive away all possibility of sleep. The bed was 
brought down and the bedstead. The only place in 
the little room where it could be set up was with the 
head against the front door. It was a frail door sur- 
rounded by cracks, and we had nothing to calk with. 
But the storm came from the opposite direction, and 
by hanging a quilt over the door we had a corner for 
our bed somewhat sheltered from the heaviest drafts. 
So, as cheerily as possible, we made our preparations 
for the night — kept the fire up, for the cold was 
growing intense ; committed ourselves to God and lay 
down to rest, if not to sleep. All night and all the 



34 Service in the King's Guards. 

next day the storm raged without intermission. 
Sometimes the minister went into the rude shed over 
the back door of the room, in order to replenish his 
coal hod. Through the gaps and crannies of the 
shed the force of the wind had driven the fine snow 
till every surface of joist and board within wore an 
ermine mantle several inches thick, and every projec- 
tion wore grotesque curves and beautiful wreaths of 
snow, compact in substance as though cut from Parian 
marble. By the middle of the afternoon of the second 
day we began to discern a diminution of the force of 
the wind, slight indeed ; but as we watched, or rather 
felt, the gusts, we were sure they were a little lighter. 
Before dark we received our first call. The doctor 
and one of the church members from the prairie 
floundered to the door of the coal shed and knocked. 
When seated beside the fire, the doctor opened his 
greatcoat and drew from its shelter our first present 
— a little bundle, as large as his arm below the elbow, 
of pine fagots for kindling. Nothing could have been 
more welcome, though we did not then know that 
wood was more precious than gold in our new parish. 
Far-seeing plans had been laid and patiently realized, 
before our neighbor could have been the possessor of 
such kindling, with a bunch to spare. If we, without 
experience, and in such a storm, had been without it, 
and our fire had once gone out, what could we have 



Beginning Housekeeping. 35 

done ! We laid it away with gratitude, and answered 
his kind inquiries as to how we had obtained food for 
the past thirty-six hours, whether we had slept, and if 
we were afraid. 

His companion had been caught in the storm, miles 
from home, had walked to the village on the rail track, 
and was now about to proceed five miles farther in the 
same direction, in order to allay the anxiety of his 
family and to provide for their wants. We protested 
at the risk of life he knew he was taking ; but he pro- 
ceeded, and fortunately reached home in safety, in 
the lulling storm. 

The son of another neighbor, a youth of fifteen, 
had started that eventful Monday morning before the 
hurricane fell, to walk from the village eight miles to 
his father's ranch. The morning was not very cold, 
and he was lightly clad. Before he was two miles 
from the village the sudden gust descended. Expe- 
rienced pioneers would have faced about for home 
with all speed, as some of them did in that very 
moment; but the boy was " plucky," and knew not 
his danger. He kept on and on, until he was thor- 
oughly bewildered, the thick air and benumbing blasts 
closing in on every side. Still, with no house near, 
he battled on, until he began to feel that the cold was 
reaching the citadel of life, and realized, at last, that 
he was helpless and hopeless. At that moment he 



36 Service in the King's Guards. 

stumbled over a harrow which he had left in his 
father's field a few days before, and whose location 
he remembered. It was not more than a quarter of a 
mile from the shelter he sought, and thus guided and 
cheered he reached the place in safety. Thus God 
answered the prayers of his gentle mother, whose 
faith alone assured her of his safety until his return 
the third day after. 

Ten miles from us, on that first fearful night, two 
young men from Missouri were groping in the awful 
darkness. They had come in spring clothing from 
their warmer home, to look over the country and select 
a new home. When the storm had subsided they 
were found stiff in the embrace of death — their 
spirits dwelt in u another clime than ours." No 
volume will record the like fate of scores, perhaps 
hundreds, who perished, " unwept, unhonored, and 
unsung," because unknown, in that fearful storm. 
There they rest, until the prairies and the sea shall 
give up their dead. 



CHAPTER IV. 

GETTING SETTLED. OUR HYMN. 

OUR first half week of dwelling figuratively 
" under our own vine and fig-tree " had passed 
when Wednesday's fitful sun broke through the strug- 
gling and retreating battalions of the storm demon. 
The snow had melted, and the mud was unspeakable. 
Not a sidewalk, not a board, before the low threshold 
of our cabin ! Every foot labored heavily through 
the rich, tarry loam of the street, and ours brought 
their quota to reinforce that which already encum- 
bered our floor. The soft coal sent its clinging, 
greasy dust over every inch of surface which the 
mud deposits did not cover, and the scanty hard 
water and soap made with the mud and coal dust 
an amalgam more disgusting than either of its 
original constituents. The minister made an improve- 
ment most heartily welcomed by the wife, when he 
deposited an armful of hay, given by a kind neigh- 
bor, before the front door, to serve both as sidewalk 
and doormat. Not long afterward there was an 
announcement made with the design of consolation. 
It was the result of continued musing on the subject, 

37 



38 Service in the King's Guards. 

and of observations gathered in the course of various 
calls on our neighbors similarly situated. " It is of 
no use," said the minister one day. " No one can 
keep tidy in these conditions. You must resign 
yourself to them without resistance, and be content 
to have the house 'hoed out' once in a while." On 
this prospect the wife meditated without present 
comment. We now set out on a prospecting tour 
among the two or three " stores" which the settlement 
possessed. More than once we found gentlemanly 
attention from behind the counter, but we did not 
find much else that we wanted. Of the coarse white 
crockery, nearly every piece was warped or otherwise 
imperfect ; and the dried fruits were so poorly and 
untidily prepared that we could not bring ourselves 
to purchase any. Anything was evidently quite good 
enough for frontier trade, and the more unsalable at 
the east, the more astute the business capacity of 
the merchant who could sell it at good prices here. 
Our larder was at length furnished. Small paper 
bags of flour, graham and corn meal, a pound or 
two of butter, and a few potatoes and eggs, occupied 
our storeroom, which was a hole about two feet by 
three beneath the stairs, and our cellar, which was 
another hole about three feet by four, under a trap- 
door in the floor before our stove. Soon the prairie 
at morning and evening would be white and gray 



Getting Settled. 39 

with flocks of wild geese, alighting for rest on their 
way northward. The boys in the family of one of 
our prairie parishioners were expert gunners, and we 
were often remembered by the gift of some of their 
trophies. Geese and other wild fowl, however, had 
so strong and ** gamy " a flavor, that only experience 
in the cooking of it could make it palatable. In the 
first two months of our residence we had no fresh 
beef. A neighbor, who had killed a pig for his own 
use, kindly made us a present of a small quantity of 
fresh pork. Canned meat and a little salt pork and 
salt fish from the store were our provisions for chief 
dependence. Only green tea was to be had, which 
we did not drink ; but green Rio coffee yielded its 
fragrance when imprisoned in a dripping pan in our 
oven, and the doctor had a cow, and generously gave 
us daily a pint or quart of milk. 

There was neither cupboard nor closet. When the 
wife had brought in the shallow tin pan which had 
been kindly bestowed upon her as a gift, and washed 
and wiped her new dishes for two on her round table, 
she was puzzled as to where she could keep them 
when the table was needed for the writing of sermons. 
Her eye fell on a little compartment formed by the 
lowest stair, which had been made with a remov- 
able top. There the dishes would be comparatively 
sheltered from mud and coal dust until a better place 



40 Service in the King's Guards. 

could be contrived. This was the only cupboard for 
some time, although, in spite of paper and cloth to 
guard them from the dust made by frequent passing 
over the rattling stair, they always needed careful 
attention before u setting the table." A bit of chintz 
brought in our trunk was made up into a curtain 
and hung before the repository of paper bags which 
served instead of a meal chest, and we settled down 
to housekeeping with no further outfit until our 
goods should arrive, when we hoped to improve our 
arrangements. 

Meantime the spring rains had begun to fall. We 
had been in our new home now long enough to take 
a "sober second thought" as to our environments. 
To our poor human vision the outlook was far enough 
from fascinating. Depression and doubt were on 
the alert, and, like the scriptural view of sin, 
they seemed, like a wild beast preparing to spring, 
" crouching at the door" of our hearts. Never will- 
ingly, nor of conscious purpose, had we yielded to 
them. No word of discouragement had either of us 
ever uttered, for the momentum of our purpose was 
still upon us, and we still hoped to help this moral wil- 
derness yet to blossom as the rose. The indulgence 
of homesickness would have been treason to the high 
ends which had brought us hither. To the unbidden 
and resisted secret temptations of each heart an 



Getting Settled. 41 

answer unlooked for soon came in a "Thus saith 
the Lord." 

For three weeks a continuous northeast rain storm 
had prevailed. Our front door faced the east, and 
was hardly an inch in thickness. The thin panels 
had cracked widely under the combined influence of 
rain and sun the previous season. Underneath the 
door was a wide gap which no ingenuity of ours, 
with the means at command, had been able to stop. 
The wind and the rain knocked at the door night and 
day. Every morning a dismal stream had beaten 
underneath it and ran nearly across our floor, leav- 
ing, when swept out, dampness and discomfort not 
to be removed. The piercing wind was a constant 
guest at our breakfast table. 

One morning in the third week of this rainy 
season we moved back from our simple breakfast, 
the wife adjusted the little loose strip of hemp car- 
pet as best she could for our comfort beside the fire, 
the minister read, as usual, from the Book, and each 
opened a Gospel song book. What instinct led the 
wife to suggest, " Let us sing No. 40"? We had 
never sung it before, and knew neither what the 
words were to be nor the tune. Though all was 
strange, we started in bravely, the husband's tenor 
voice on the soprano, supplemented by the wife's 
alto. Cheerfully we sang, — 



42 Service in the King's Guards. 

u Holy Spirit, faithful guide, 
Ever near the Christian's side, 
Gently lead us by the hand, 
Pilgrims in a desert land." 

Voices were softening, but we went on, — 

u Ever-present, truest Friend, 
Ever near, thine aid to lend, 
Leave us not to doubt and fear, 
Groping on in darkness drear." 

Tones were trembling now. The unspoken heart- 
sinkings of all the past weeks were gathering and 
culminating, unbidden and unwelcome, and, for an 
instant only, our self-control seemed on the point of 
taking leave. But the song paused not, the tune and 
the words carrying us forward to victory. Though 
our hearts were melted like wax, tears, not of depres- 
sion, but of holy exultation, fell like rain from our 
eyes, while voices grew stronger as the strain went 
on, — 

"When the storms are raging sore, 
Hearts grow faint, and hopes give o'er, 
Whispering softly, Wanderer, come, 
Follow me; I HI guide thee home." 

Peace and triumph came with these words. It was 
as though He who stood by night beside his apostle, 
saying, " Be of good cheer, Paul!" had even come 



Getting Settled. 43 

also to us, his humble messengers. If a voice from 
heaven had audibly spoken to us assurance of sym- 
pathy and encouragement and divine leadership, the 
impression could hardly have been stronger, the com- 
fort more real. Scarcely conscious of our need until 
the Word came, it was as with the tender comfort 
of one u whom his mother comforteth." The prayer 
that closed our morning devotions was little else than 
the breathing out of broken and contrite spirits into 
the ear of an eternal Friend. 

From that hour forth there was, in our pioneer 
work, a freedom from small annoyances of spirit, a 
smoothness in the running of the wheels of daily life, 
a sense of the upholding, protecting presence of the 
Lord in degree beyond what we had known before, 
and without fitfulness or much variation. Thus early 
was gracious reward made to walk hand in hand 
with endeavor. 



CHAPTER V. 

AMONG THE PEOPLE. 

THE clouds at length began to clear, and the mud 
to dry. It was time that we made acquaintance 
with the more remote of our parishioners. 

An early call was on a family who lived in a sod 
house. Sod houses are built where there is no supply 
of lumber, or no means to buy it. A furrow is turned 
from the stout sward of the prairie, about a foot or 
eighteen inches in width, which is then cut by the 
spade into squares. These squares are piled one on 
another to form the thick walls of the house, one side 
being carried higher than that opposite, to afford the 
requisite slope for the roof. Openings are cut or 
formed in the walls as they rise, for door and window. 
A few rough boards are laid slantwise from wall to 
wall, and covered with sods, which thus form the roof 
also, with a hole in one corner for the stove funnel. A 
window sash or half sash and a rough door complete 
the outfit. Sometimes the luxury of a rough loose 
board floor is found within, but often only a floor of 
hard-trodden earth, with a piece or two of board by 
way of rug, before the bed. 

44 




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Among the People. 45 

The walls of this first sod house which we entered 
were very thick, and we congratulated the owner, one 
of the best farmers, on having a dwelling which shut 
out the cold winds. 

" Yes," he said, Ci but the roof leaks wretchedly. 
It leaks mud on us, and I must do something." 

The sweet-faced mistress of the house was tending 
her two beautiful children cheerily ; but how our hearts 
sank at the close proximity of cupboard, bed, stove, 
table, and crib ! This mother proved a quiet but 
efficient helper in all good things, whether church 
social, temperance meeting, or Sunday-school festival. 

Another call was upon a young man and his wife, 
persons of intelligence from a college town in an 
eastern state, who brought letters of highest recom- 
mendation from their former pastor. The house — 
this one of boards — was about ten by twelve feet, 
and contained one room. Within was neatness itself. 
The cook-stove shone with spotless luster ; the neat 
wardrobe, made and painted by the husband, con- 
cealed unused clothing ; the stand which matched it 
was faultless, and so were the floor, and the bed in the 
corner. The wife's father, mother, and four brothers 
(two of them young men) had just arrived from the 
cast, and taken up a temporary residence with the 
young couple until the spring crops should be planted, 
and thev could build a home for themselves. 



46 Service in the King's Guards. 

We asked how these eight persons slept in this one 
little kitchen. 

" On straw ticks laid on the floor at night," was the 
reply. 

We did not press inquiry further, but on our way 
home meditated on the situation. The father and 
mother doubtless had the bed ; the master and mis- 
tress probably slept on a ; ' straw tick " produced from 
some impossible place and laid upon the floor. The 
two older brothers had another. But two straw ticks 
would fill absolutely every available foot of the floor 
space. Where could those two younger brothers 
sleep ? All at once the solution occurred to us both. 
Those two boys of ten and twelve must have slept 
wider the bed! 

An early call of the minister's was upon his near- 
est ministerial neighbor, several miles distant. This 
neighbor and his wife had come a year or two 
before our arrival, passing through the exceeding 
severity of that long-to-be-remembered winter. He 
told us that he had just ten dollars in money on his 
arrival, and that he bought lumber on credit with 
which to build his house. The frame was constructed 
of a few small scantlings. On this slight framework 
were nailed thin boards for the covering. Within, the 
walls were lined and partitions made, not of laths and 
plaster, but simply of brown paper tacked on the 



Among the People. 47 

studding. This, in sheets, with their frequent loose 
overlappings, helped but inadequately to keep out the 
cold of winter. It was the habit of that minister and 
his wife during the first winter to wear all the clothing 
they could command when about ordinary household 
duties, including overcoats, shawls, mittens, and arc- 
tic overshoes ; and then they were seldom or never 
comfortably warm out of bed. For this reason they 
spent many daylight waking hours in bed during the 
severest weather. 

One excellent result of calling among our parish- 
ioners was to send us home cheered by the contrast 
between their family accommodations and ours. We 
were so much better off than most, that our little cabin 
usually looked positively attractive when we got back 
to it. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FIRST COMMUNION. — OUR SUNDAY-SCHOOL. — A 
JOURNEY. 

rT^HE first weeks had passed, and the time of May 
-*- communion was approaching. This ordinance 
had been enjoyed but once before — at the organiza- 
tion of the little church. It was desirable that as 
many should be gathered as possible in the village for 
its celebration Sunday morning, and, after it, be 
quickly ready to go to the afternoon service on the 
prairie. Our little cabin now rejoiced in a pine cup- 
board, a rag carpet, window curtains, and sundry pro- 
visions of canned fruit, meat, white beans, etc., which 
had arrived in our boxes, as well as a few pieces of 
table linen, china, and silver. So our country mem- 
bers were invited to dine with us after the morning 
service, and also the pastor and deacon from the 
nearest church, who had signified their hope to be with 
us on this important and joyful occasion. Every 
possible preparation was made on Saturday. Sunday 
morning the little waiting room at the station wit- 
nessed a memorable scene. A small white tablecloth 
was spread over the office table ; a china plate and 



The First Communion. 49 

pitcher and a common glass tumbler serving to convey 
the sacred emblems, of which the unwontedly large 
congregation of believers partook, with tears of thank- 
fulness, while children and rude frontiersmen were 
interested spectators. 

The pastor's wife excused herself, immediately after 
the service, from the Sunday-school, that she might 
hasten home, well knowing the difficulty she would 
experience in preparing dinner in the tiny cabin when 
all the guests should have arrived to crowd the space, 
in the center of which the table was already set. But 
a number of the guests also declined the invitation 
to remain to Sunday-school, and were crossing the 
street toward the house before she had laid aside 
bonnet and gloves. The visiting minister sat between 
the stove and the table, his feet warming in the oven 
while he socially discoursed to the hostess on high 
themes in a most interesting way. With scarcely 
opportunity to turn, or to collect her thoughts on the 
duty before her, the hostess inaudibly sighed for " six 
feet of kitchen " to herself, and felt almost dis- 
mayed at the task of serving dinner in an orderly 
way to ten persons in these circumstances. The 
husband gladly shared with her the privilege of serv- 
ing the guests, but eight were too many to find room 
at the little round table, which had neither " exten- 
sion leaves" nor room to spread them in. Six of 



50 Service in the King's Guards. 

the guests were men, one was the visiting pastor's 
wife, and one the little daughter of a judge who 
had come as one of the guests. The lady guest 
assured the hostess that she could be handsomely 
accommodated by spreading a napkin beneath her 
plate on the broad step at the turning of the stairs, 
and sitting on the step below ; and knowing that it was 
both nature and habit to this gentle woman to rejoice 
in the lowliest place, we yielded to the necessity. 
After the lady and the seven around the table had 
been served, the minister had his dinner on the stand, 
for he also had to go immediately to the second 
service. Never, it seemed to us, was a meal more 
enjoyed in Christian fellowship. Then the lumber 
wagons and other vehicles bore away the whole com- 
pany towards the prairie schoolhouse, leaving the 
hostess to restore order and neatness to cabin and 
cupboard. This was a task which filled nearly the 
whole afternoon, and left her almost too weary for 
even Bible and hymn book to bring their wonted cheer 
afterward ; but it was felt to be strength well spent. 

The Sunday-school grew perceptibly in interest, and 
as the spring came, several children, who had not 
been able to attend in winter, joined the classes. The 
large and small girls were still all together in one class, 
and made a pretty picture. The tiniest would sit in 
the lap of the teacher, and another little one would 






The First Communion, 51 

stand beside her, while the older girls would each take 
one or two little ones to hold also. One girl, eight 
years old, walked alone two miles across the prairie to 
the school and back, except when she caught an old 
white horse and rode on his back without a saddle, as 
she used to do sometimes. One of the older girls, 
about fifteen, was an orphan and lived with her grand- 
parents. She had never been to school a day in her 
life because she had always lived on a frontier where 
there was no school. She had at home learned to 
read and had mastered a little arithmetic, but she 
seemed not to have had much religious instruction. 
One day her cheek flushed and her eyes grew eager, 
as her teacher told of the Saviour and about asking 
for his help and care. As they talked on, the little 
one standing at the teacher's side said artlessly, u I 
know a verse about Jesus," and then repeated a 
beautiful little prayer her mother had taught her. 
Then the youngest of all, in the teacher's lap, said her 
prayer, in a way so sweet as to bring tears to the 
eyes of the teacher. They had perhaps never been to 
Sunday-school before, and prattled on, not knowing 
enough to be afraid, until the boys' class, and even 
the Bible class, had stopped to listen to the children's 
talk about Jesus. Again, as so often in the world's 
old story, from the mouths of babes was the praise 
of God perfected. 



52 Service in the King's Guards. 

The children of this village were more than a year 
without any day school whatever, and the Sunday- 
school was their privilege and their joy. 

Not long after the opening of the spring flowers 
circumstances called for a journey of about two hun- 
dred and eighty miles " across country." Though all 
the way was a public thoroughfare, if it had been 
planned with an especial view to discomfort and 
inconvenience it could hardly have been arranged 
more effectually to accomplish this object. First a 
few miles were traveled by rail, and then came the 
variety of about twenty miles by stage. Sloughs and 
rough roads and showers did not make this partic- 
ularly agreeable. For some miles before we reached 
a point where we were again to take the railroad a 
white church spire rising from trees which crowned an 
eminence was conspicuous. This welcome sight was 
the church connected with the first Indian home- 
stead settlement in the territory. At the village, 
which had grown up at the nucleus of this settlement, 
now twelve years old, and composed of whites and 
Indians, we were obliged to wait for our train from 
noon till nearly midnight. Accompanied by the genial 
and obliging host of the hotel, we went to call on the 
Indian minister, whose work here was already rising to 
"praise him in the gates." He and his wife were 
absent, but we were courteously received by three 



The First Communion. 53 

Indian maidens, and shown the building used by the 
school, of which this minister was also the teacher. 
His residence was in the front part of the building. 
As we were courteously ushered through the rooms by 
an Indian girl, with the dress and manners of a lady, 
who spoke perfectly correct and polite English, we 
caught glimpses of a well-ordered bedroom, with a cat 
curled up asleep on the bed, of a sitting and dining 
room, with extension table, cushioned rocking-chair, 
and well-filled bookcase, — signs of civilization most 
welcome to our hungry eyes. The schoolroom was 
furnished with modern school furniture, large black- 
board, wall charts, clock, and outline maps. On the 
teacher's table lay a handsome Bible with a gilt clasp, 
and a red morocco-covered hymn book, both trans- 
lated into the Dakota language by the missionaries, 
Williamson and Riggs. The unpronounceable Indian 
words in the hymn book look strangely under the Eng- 
lish titles, " Old Hundred," " Coronation," " Dennis," 
and so forth. On the fly leaf was written the pastor's 
name in lines singularly clear, delicate, and graceful, 
and opposite was pasted a little printed slip containing 
the hymn, " Pass me not, gentle Saviour ! " in the 
Dakota tongue. The school register was shown us, 
containing the names of thirty-four pupils, with the 
attendance for a previous month carefully marked for 
each half day. 



54 Service in the Kiiyg's Guards. 

Beside the school was the public granary, where 
grain for seed and other special needs was stored ; and 
below, on the river, beside which an Indian trail has 
run from time immemorial, was a large flouring mill, not 
built by the Indians, but situated on an Indian claim. 
Walking out to the bank of the river, we picked a 
dozen varieties of flowers, — anemones, violets, butter- 
cups, and several unfamiliar and unnamable specimens, 
— and enjoyed the landscape, which here had the 
charm of native oaks, elms, and cottonwood, growing 
along the river's course. These Indians are the Santee 
Sioux, then numbering about one hundred families, or 
between three and four hundred individuals. They 
resided mostly outside the village, on farms which 
they owned and tilled, and their comfortable homes 
were in no way to be distinguished from those of well- 
to-do white settlers. Good frame houses, many neatly 
painted, and with goodly groves of trees around them, 
planted and grown by themselves, attested the possi- 
bility of civilizing the Indians. These were, at least 
in part, those Indians concerned in the Minnesota 
massacres of 18C2, who were long imprisoned at 
Mankato and Davenport, and among whom that won- 
derful revival took place so graphically described by 
Dr. Riggs in his book, " Mary and I." In prison, 
while the leaders were taken from them and executed, 
and many of their number were dying from exposure 



TJie First Communion. 55 

and prison diseases, hundreds learned to read and 
write, and many were truly converted. At length 
they were transported to a point on the Missouri and 
liberated, but after a few years' experience of life as 
dependents at a government agency they emigrated 
hither to form this homestead settlement on the Big 
Sioux. 

This refreshing detour within the bounds of civiliza- 
tion had rested our bodies and cheered our hearts, so 
that we prepared with alacrity for the midnight train 
which was to bear us still farther towards life a little 
removed from the first raw, uncouth stage of ever- 
surrounding " newness." The unwelcome hour of two 
o'clock in the morning set us down again from our 
railroad train, but this time near an excellent hotel, 
where we snatched a few hours' sleep. By seven 
o'clock a.m. we had breakfasted, and were again on 
our way. Though still in a new land, the country 
looked old in comparison with the frontier counties. 
Painted and plastered houses, brick chimneys, wire- 
fenced pastures, bespoke a few years' vantage in the 
struggle of civilization with the " boundless contiguity " 
of primeval prairie. 

Soon we had our first view of the Missouri River, in 
length the grandest river in the world, its clay-colored 
banks giving color and almost " consistency " to the 
majestic stream, on which the significant name, " Big 



56 Service in the King's Guards. 

Muddy, " was bestowed by the Indians. The object 
of our journey accomplished, we returned by the same 
route with gladness to our frontier cabin. The thirty- 
six hours consumed in making the journey either way 
compassed less than three hundred miles — time which 
would have sufficed to make a journey from Boston to 
Chicago with far greater ease and comfort. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE FIRST FUNERAL. 

ON a beautiful July day the doctor called to say 
that a man had died seven miles from the 
village, and the minister was requested to attend the 
funeral. The doctor added, " The family live in a 
sod house. That is a comparatively comfortable place 
while people are well, but if they get sick it is 
likely to go hard with them." With the needed offer 
of his horse and buggy for a conveyance, after 
giving a few particulars of the history of the family, 
the kind-hearted doctor departed. The hour of noon 
saw the minister and his wife well on the way toward 
the place of sorrow, for the road was long and untried. 
We rode for miles over the prairie, often uncertain as 
to the way, fearful of missing the track, and of plung- 
ing perhaps into impassable sloughs. After stopping 
almost as often as we came in sight of a shanty, to 
inquire the way, we reached at last our destination. 
It was such a July day as we have never seen else- 
where. High overarching heavens of intensest blue 
and white, a cool breeze, magnificent sunshine flood- 
ing earth and sky, combined to spread over the vast, 

57 



58 Service in the King's Guards. 

green, billowy prairies of waving grass and grain a 
glory all their own. 

As we came, at last, in sight of the house we 
could see the neighbors gathering from their humble 
homes, some of them from miles away. Death is 
wont to be sad, and every funeral service has gloom 
enough. But in this case the sadness was unusual, 
and the gloom seemed almost without relief. Arrived 
at the place of mourning, a glance revealed sorrowful 
faces of parents and children within the house. In 
the only room was a single window, through which 
the afternoon sun was shining, a stove, a rough pine 
bedstead before which lay two or three small pieces 
of board on the floor of earth, and a few pine stools or 
benches. A rude pine table stood in the shade of the 
house, outside the door, on which was a pine coffin 
stained black, which already enclosed its sad burden. 
There was not a chair, nor an article of cabinet 
furniture of any description. The neighbors who had 
assembled were not invited to enter the house. It was 
a kindness to allow them to arrange themselves on 
extemporized seats, taken from their wagons, or 
made of a few boards on small boxes, by the shaded 
wall of sods on either side of the door. 

Within this single apartment a family of nine had 
made their home about a year before. The grand- 
parents had come from Scotland to Canada long ago. 



The First Funeral. 59 

Not yet threescore and ten, they, with a son, his 
wife, and five little children, had now come in poverty 
to seek a home where land is waiting for the poor. 
Here, on this u claim," the grandmother had died in 
the first winter, and here, on a day when wind and 
storm forbade even the presence of the nearest neigh- 
bors, except two or three, — minister then there was 
none, — she had been buried. Now, after a few 
months of loneliness without her, they were to carry 
the grandfather to be laid beside his wife. 

Just inside the door of the house, in presence of 
the mourners and assembled neighbors, with the grass 
in blossom on the sod roof waving in the air above 
his head, the minister stood, with his Bible and 
Gospel song book, to read of the " many mansions," 
and to sing of the " land that is fairer than day." 
What a privilege and a refuge was prayer in such 
circumstances ! 

Soon the closed pine coffin was in the wagon, with 
a bunch of white petunias and sweet alyssum on the 
lid, reviving for us sad memories of other scenes 
where cultivated flowers more beautiful, but not more 
rare than these were now, exhaled their fragrance for 
the tomb. The children, from two to seven years 
of age, were left in the hut, the eldest to care for 
the others, while the father and mother followed 
the coffin on foot. Then came the conveyance of the 



60 Service in the King's Guards. 

pastor and his wife, and four or five other vehicles 
with sympathizing neighbors. 

The knoll on the farm where the grandmother had 
been laid was now ready to receive the grandfather 
to its bosom. But for that solitary, unmarked mound 
of green, it would have seemed like lowering a coffin 
overboard at sea. On that lonely hilltop, around that 
open grave, in such circumstances, what comfort was 
there for the bereaved family, crushed by sorrow as 
really, in their poverty, as the wise, the great, the rich, 
might have been amid surrounding luxury? What 
could be said to the hard-handed, tawny sons of toil 
who stood around them in awe and sympathy? 

Human words are empty here. But the divine 
Word was uttered for such a need. Every man 
bared his head as the minister read the words, 
which, to more than one heart, seemed to have been 
written for such a time as this, as for none before. 

u That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it 
die : and that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that 
body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, 
• or of some other grain : but God giveth it a body as it hath 
pleased him, and to every seed his own body. ... So also 
is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption ; 
it is raised in incorruption : it is sown in dishonour ; it is 
raised in glory: . . . It is sown a natural body; it is raised 
a spiritual body. . . . For this corruptible must put on 
incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. . . . 



TJie First Funeral. 61 

"Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through 
our Lord Jesus Christ." 

To lift one's eyes was to look to the far sweep of 
the horizon in every direction, and to see, stretching 
thither, vast fields of grain waving for the harvest, 
some of which these men before us had watched, as 
planted by their hands a few weeks ago ; they knew 
the seed had died in mold and darkness to nourish 
the new life w^hich now clothed these fields in beauty 
and rejoicing. Who shall say that the lesson did 
not sink into their hearts as though they had never 
heard it before ? Perchance in some bosom there was 
planted 

u The seeds of holiness, to blossom 
In fragrance and in beauty bright and vernal, 
To spring eternal." 

And this perfect day, worthy of " the new heavens 
and the new earth " in its exquisite beauty, laid its 
balm upon our souls. Gazing upward into the deep, 
transparent blue of the overarching sky with its mag- 
nificent opening clouds, our tears of joy mingled with 
the inspired words, and we could almost see, coming 
44 in like manner " as he departed, the tender, radiant 
form of Him who is the resurrection and the life. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE SCHOOLHOUSE. NEW FRIENDS. THE CHURCH. 

T I ^HE first school meeting after our arrival was 
-**- held in the office of the lumber depot. Im- 
portant action, affecting the welfare of all the people, 
was pending, and all the people believed in having 
both school and church. If any could be found to 
acknowledge no higher reason, it was necessary for 
the real estate interests that there should be both. 
It was curious to note how these interests were upper- 
most in the thoughts of nearly all. Several times we 
were the objects of unasked sympathy because all the 
good "claims" near the village had been taken up 
before our arrival, and great was the surprise when it 
was ascertained that the minister did not wish to take 
up land. Indeed, during the years of his residence 
west he was continually urged, in a friendly way, 
not to neglect the opportunity of securing the three 
" quarter sections," which, as " preemption," " home- 
stead," and "tree-claim," it was in his power to 
obtain, and it was also intimated that the wife might 
"file " on land in her own right. The negatives cour- 
teously given in reply were received with unfeigned 

62 



The Schoolhouse. 63 

astonishment sometimes ; sometimes, it is to be feared, 
with silent contempt. Not to have come for land was 
thought to be incompatible with good sense, even in 
a minister. 

The intense worldliness filled head and heart and 
hands of the people to such a degree that even school 
interests were left to the control of a very few. At 
this school meeting the office of the lumber shed 
was quite large enough to accommodate the four or 
five men and two women who attended. The min- 
ister and his wife were of the number, and when 
the vote was taken, both, as qualified voters, exer- 
cised their rights under the law. The result was 
unanimous. 

It was not long before the foundations of the school- 
house were laid. It was to be built on a plan pre- 
viously adopted, and on a scale commensurate with the 
expectations of the people in regard to the future of 
the town. How we watched the progress of the 
work ! Every sign of advance was hailed with a 
heartfelt joy which surprised even ourselves. It 
could hardly have been pleasure more real if the 
house had been only for our own personal benefit. 

When it was enclosed with sides and roof, and floors 
laid, the Sabbath congregation joyfully migrated from 
the railroad waiting room to the new edifice. Only 
the lower story was at first to be finished, so to the 



64 Service in the King's Guards. 

upper, where we could be unmolested by workmen for 
months to come, we repaired until the lower floor 
should be completed. It was in the long summer, 
when the rains fall not, and we needed not to wait 
until the window openings were filled with sash and 
glass. The room was large enough to accommodate 
the growing congregation, and that alone was cause 
for gratitude. How our songs of praise floated out 
through the open windows of that unfinished upper 
room on the delicious prairie air of that unclouded 
Sunday morning ! The company were seated on 
boards supported by nail kegs, the feet of a number 
of the grown persons and all the children swinging at 
various distances above the floor, and with only the 
rough inside of the siding and the studding for backs 
to the seats ; indeed, most had no backs at all. But 
there was hope of better accommodation erelong, and 
even this was a palace compared to the quarters 
which the congregation had met in for now many 
months. Never, it seemed, were people more thank- 
ful, and our schoolhouse was better to us than a cathe- 
dral would have been with Gothic spire and vaulted 
aisle. 

The immigration of the year had been large in the 
whole country, and, though not so great as had been 
expected to this particular locality, new faces were 
constantly seen in the congregation, and new homes 



The Schoolhouse. 65 

were constantly made around us. On one of our 
Sunday mornings at the depot a well-dressed family 
had appeared, consisting of a gentleman, his wife, 
and lovely little son. The contrast between this serv- 
ice and that of the city church of two thousand 
members which they had left needed no emphasizing. 
When the minister led in the closing hymn, "I've 
found a Friend," tears rained down the face of the 
lady, and we knew there was small room in the home- 
sick heart for the welcome that awaited the newcomers 
when the services were over, and the introductions 
were made. Yet this lady proved one of our valued 
helpers, and we knew no one more resolute than she 
became in battling with the trials of a new country. 

One day, near sunset, an English gentleman and 
his wife appeared at our door, inquiring for the home 
of a distant parishioner. They had, a few moments 
before, left the railway train, to end at our door a 
journey made without a break from Manchester, Eng- 
land. Two thousand miles of ocean, and two thou- 
sand miles of land, placed not the barriers between 
them and their old home which were interposed by 
the change of situation and customs. 

Learning that the friends whom they sought lived a 
few miles from the village, they set out with alacrity 
to walk. They knew no English oaks and no hedge- 
rows would diversify the scene, but they did not know 



66 Service in the King's Guards. 

the difference between following paths through English 
meadows and over English stiles, and following trails 
over uncultivated American prairie. Soon the lady's 
shoes were almost cut from her feet ; but her greatest 
difficulty was yet before her. They had come to the 
edge of a large morass, almost impassable to those 
who well knew the way across it. Here they paused, 
in anxiety and doubt, for the night was falling. Soon, 
however, a man driving an ox-team before a wagon 
without a box approached from behind them. Joy- 
fully they accepted his offered help. The lady, seated 
on the long " reach " between the wagon wheels, made 
the transit safely, and soon they were at the home of 
the friends they sought — a home, like all the others, 
in name and in feeling, but with little else. On the 
following Sunday morning these English friends were 
among the congregation in the schoolhouse. Friendly 
sympathy was not wasted, for the lady confessed that 
she had scarcely been able to listen to the sermon, 
because of the abundance of her tears. 

Erelong the first floor of the schoolhouse was fin- 
ished, furnished with seats and table, and became the 
sanctuary — its only use, for as yet neither teacher 
nor school had " materialized." A cabinet organ was 
brought from the home of our first friends, and the 
Sabbath service took on an orderliness and dignity 
most welcome, both in the congregation and the 



Tfie Schoolhouse. 67 

Sunday-school, which latter, now graded and supplied 
with teachers, made rapid gains in the bright, warm 
weather. 

The church edifice, too, was going upward. When 
the foundations were to be laid, every man, except 
one, was overwhelmed by the demands of seeding time 
on the new farms and of business in the village. The 
stone had been brought by freight train, and the lime 
for mortar, precious in proportion to its scarcity, had 
been burned in kilns hundreds of miles eastward. 
One farmer, who felt an interest in the work, at length 
came to help with a wagon and a yoke of oxen. This 
was a great reinforcement to the mason and the minis- 
ter, who were on the ground alone. The mortar was 
to be made, and the stone hauled from the freight 
depot, and the wall was to be laid. The mason super- 
intended the work and laid the wall, the farmer and 
the minister alternating, according to convenience, in 
driving the oxen, which drew the stone, and carrying 
mortar to the mason. The first time the minister 
drove the oxen with their load through the chief street 
of the village, even the rush of trade and speculation 
was for a moment suspended, as men and boys turned 
out of their places of business to see how he did it. 
He knew that practiced e} 7 es and ears would instantly 
detect any signs of inexperience, but, thanks to his 
boyhood training on a New England farm ! he was 



68 Service in the King's Guards. 

enabled to pass the ordeal with credit, and even to be 
conscious that from that day he had a new advantage 
in preaching to those same men and boys. Their 
minister, after all, was a man of affairs. His subse- 
quent ability to unload the rocks and the lumber, sift 
the sand, mix the mortar, and his privilege of carry- 
ing the first hod, made less impression on the com- 
munity, if not less demand on his strength and skill. 
Slowly through the delightful days the good work 
went on, and the interest we had felt in the school- 
house was superseded by the greater joy with which 
we watched the uprearing of a house of the Lord. As 
became a frontier church, it was modest indeed, but 
beautiful in outline against the background of sky 
and prairie. And when its spire was completed our 
eyes were gladdened as by "some tall palm" over- 
shadowing a well in the desert. 




UJ 

g 



CHAPTER IX. 

A NEIGHBORING CHURCH. 

(ETTERS missive had come, inviting the pastor 
-^ and church to participate in the organization of 
another church in an adjoining county. The pastor's 
wife was elected a delegate from the church, — no one 
else could go, — and on a bright summer morning we 
set out. Our strange horse proved to be kind and 
tractable, and, in this dry season, our light buggy was 
adequate to the toils of the road. The way was 
delightful. The long swells of the prairie were car- 
peted by grass, which now, under an August sun, had 
everywhere turned to a dried feathery mass of a 
beautiful fawn color. In this delicate setting the 
purple and lavender of the " thimble flower " were 
massed in patches so thick as to be worthy of an 
expert gardener in " ribbon " effects. Then there 
were acres covered with other compound flowers, 
which seemed to be the peculiar favorites of the 
prairie soil at this season. Great yellow ox-eyed 
daisies nodded in the winds by the thousand; " wild 
sunflowers," large and small, in a dozen varieties, 
made the distant view bright with their blossoms. 

69 



70 Service in the King's Guards. 

Never had we seen elsewhere wild roses of so rich 
and deep a pink, set in leaves of so exquisite a green, 
as those which grew along our track under this fervid 
sky. The harmonies of color filled one's soul with 
nature's inarticulate music. And, what joy ! Here 
were twin lakes, with a roadway between, along which 
real trees were actually growing ! This was our first 
sight of trees in this part of the world. There had 
been days in that shadeless summer when, if a tree 
had been on exhibition miles away, with a high price 
for admission, we would gladly have made the pil- 
grimage for the sake of beholding it. And now here 
was a strip of land, two or three miles long, washed 
on either side by the waters of a lake, where the 
prairie fires had been kept away, and trees were 
growing. Not the majestic elms and maples of New 
England and the middle states, but willows and scrub 
oaks, tweuty or thirty feet high, whose tops had 
been depressed, and whose scrawny arms had been 
stretched awry by the relentless winds, but whose 
roots were deep and whose leaves withered not beside 
these waters. A luxurious wild grapevine mantled 
one of them ; in places there was thick underbrush, 
while in others only thin grass overspread the sandy 
soil beneath the grateful shade. All prairie land 
seemed more homelike and cheerful when we had seen 
these trees, and in the strength of that uplifting we 



A Neighboring Church. 71 

fared on our way rejoicing. Part of the way we had 
a well-marked wagon track. Then for miles we were 
out of the sight of human habitations, following our 
instincts only, over a trackless prairie. Once we 
drove into the tall grass of a dry slough which 
extended far and wide across our way. We feared no 
mire because we were in the dry season, but a multi- 
tude of prairie hens fluttered and screamed out of 
their invaded nesting places, the fledgelings hardly 
tumbling out of the way fast enough to escape the 
footfalls of our horse. Both hens and "humans" 
were almost equally startled and uncomfortable over 
the unexpected encounter. We had spent the first 
night with a family within the bounds of our own 
large parish, and the journey was ended on the second 
day in time for the afternoon service in the school- 
house where the new church was to be organized. 
The young pastor told modestly the story of his 
coming to the place, the success of his labors, the 
presence of a number of Christian people who were 
willing to enter into covenant together, of the room 
for such an organization, and its promise of growth ; 
and then the church was solemnly constituted and 
commended to God. We remained for the night, had 
an evening service, and early the next morning set 
out on our return. The likeness of the country to the 
region where we lived was so great that for much of 



72 Service in the King's Guards. 

the way, if we had been blindfolded and led to the 
spot, we could not have affirmed that we were not in 
our own county. This journey of seventy miles, all 
told, left the traces of an August sun and wind, hot 
as from a furnace, upon our faces, notwithstanding all 
practicable precautions. It was Saturday night when 
we drew up at the door of our little home with blis- 
tered faces. There was not a morsel of cooked food in 
the house, but we got through the Sabbath with more 
comfort than we had feared, and rejoiced in the privi- 
leges of Christian fellowship, and of a share in the 
foundation of Christian institutions in this new land. 



CHAPTER X. 

SUMMER DIVERSIONS. 

IT was early in our first summer that our cabin 
began to show improvement. June had come to 
clothe the earth with its beauty. The spring rainy 
season was past ; the winds, though high for an east- 
ern country, were not so for the far west, and with 
beauty and comfortable footpaths out-of-doors came 
the hope that more comeliness and comfort might be 
had within. Wire screens tacked over our two little 
chamber windows kept out the myriads of mosquitoes 
that filled the air at every nightfall, and green cambric 
curtains helped to shut out the blazing sun by day. 
Many a time did we resolve to paper or cover with 
sheets the alternation of unplaned boards, black and 
odorous tar paper, and rough rafters of the roof which 
shut close down over the head of our bedstead, but 
more pressing needs prevented the realization of that 
plan. 

The rough and open coal shed at the back door 
was made over, by the skill of a man with hammer 
and saw, and the help of the minister, into a com- 
fortable summer kitchen, which rejoiced in the dignity 

73 



74 Service in the King's Guards. 

of two small glass windows and a door with a latch. 
The rough floor was covered with oilcloth brought 
from the east, which served its purpose well, except 
that it could not keep out the scores of centipedes 
which found their way into the kitchen every day 
for weeks. However, these were small trials com- 
pared with the lizards, of a peculiar species, which 
sported in uncountable numbers in a cellar, on an 
adjoining lot, half-filled with water in the early sum- 
mer. To some these creatures were more disagreeable 
than snakes, which were not very numerous, though 
one nest of thirteen had been destroyed in the street 
a few rods from our door. They were harmless, 
however, and it was said that no rattlesnakes had 
ever been seen in this strip of country, forty miles 
wide between the two large rivers which bounded it, 
although they were plenty on the opposite banks of 
both rivers. But the lizards were reputed to have 
a poisonous bite. They exuded a milky white fluid 
when enraged, and were altogether very repulsive. 
They seemed to swarm in multitudes which no man 
could number. A gentleman told us that on one 
occasion during the summer he was driving, when 
he came upon a double line of lizards, all traveling 
one way, in the ruts worn by the wagon wheels on 
a prairie road ; that he drove at one side of this 
unique procession for about half a mile, leaving off 



Slimmer Diversions, 75 

counting in weariness, after he had numbered thou- 
sands of them ! He thought they were migrating 
towards a certain lake, but of this he was not certain. 

Flies were not very numerous, but mosquitoes made 
the nights of man and beast miserable for two or 
three months. One day we were driving over a patch 
of prairie recently burned. As we approached the 
blackened stubble and ashy soil a cloud of mosqui- 
toes arose from the ground, which literally darkened 
the air, and we escaped them only when we left the 
burnt prairie behind us. But in the house, with the 
precautions of fine wire screens at the windows, as 
little opening and closing of doors as possible, and 
no evening lights, we were able to get through the 
mosquito season in comparative comfort. 

In our new kitchen were set up cook-stove and 
cupboard ; and a home-made table, neatly spread, 
sufficed for meals when no company was present. 
With our main room freed from the uses of a kitchen, 
the possible improvement became a delightful reality. 
A shelf high on the wall, behind the front door, held 
the few indispensable books, which were the only 
ones unpacked, the remainder of our eight hundred 
volumes being stored with superfluous carpets, 
pictures, and bedding, in the lumber depot, awaiting 
better accommodations. From the edge of our one 
bookshelf depended ample curtains, of cheese cloth 



76 Service in the King's Guards. 

edged with scarlet, making underneath the shelf a 
clothespress more ornamental than the unpainted 
board wall which it hid. Dotted white muslin curtains 
hung in graceful folds from the two windows, a few 
cherished landscape pictures were hung on the walls, 
and a bright scarlet and drab carpet lay on the floor. 
A bed-lounge, which would accommodate a chance 
guest by night, and made an attractive sofa by day, 
was procured from the same distant place where we 
had procured our bedstead. These, with the comfort- 
able easy-chair we had brought with us, the borrowed 
round table in the center of the room, with ample 
drapery, books and lamp, and a few chairs, made 
us a little parlor of which we had no reason to be 
ashamed. There was a new feeling of cheer from the 
day when our carpet, bright even in cloudy weather, 
was laid, and these few simple touches given to the 
little home. "I only fear," said the minister, "that 
we are getting too fine. I do not want our neighbors 
to feel the contrast unpleasantly. Do not let us 
embellish any more." 

There was small need of this last caution, for all 
the resources possible to us had been exhausted in 
this effort. And no neighbor seemed either to be 
shy or envious. 

We had neither horse nor buggy, although our parish 
was so large, and the Sabbath services were far apart. 



Summer Diversions. 77 

Parishioners who had both, however, kindly furnished 
conveyance when it was absolutely necessary. For 
air and exercise we wished to keep up the habit of 
a daily walk. With neither sidewalk nor good roads, 
we soon found the railway track our most available 
place of recreation, and here, as the day waned, we 
communed with each other and with earth and heaven, 
while the flower-covered banks of the track, the wild 
meadows and morasses, or the cultivated stretches 
of wheat, corn, and flax on either side grew familiar, 
and we felt an interest in each akin to that we would 
have experienced had the field been our own. That 
rail track, and the long train which thundered through 
our village twice every twenty-four hours, had seemed 
during our first weeks of residence like the only links 
with the civilized world. A sense of indescribable 
joy would distill upon the heart, as the shrill scream 
and ponderous thud heralded the coming of the train. 
Now that we had grown more accustomed to life in 
these strange conditions, our friendship for the rail- 
way track was not lessened, but rather grew stronger 
with the familiarity which breeds, " not contempt, but 
kindness," between friends in constant intercourse. 

From the safe vantage ground of the railroad track 
we learned the continually changing, yet ever remain- 
ing, characteristics of each landscape, north, south, 
east, west ; we grew familiar with the squawk of the 



78 Service in the King's Guards. 

mud hen, and the habits of the canvasback duck, 
and many other wild fowl which peopled the ponds 
and morasses ; we marked the successive heights of 
vanished waters in the railway ditches, whose sides 
were covered with strata of alkali deposits ; we fol- 
lowed as far as tiring feet would allow " the narrow- 
ing rails that met to pierce the distance," and watched 
with apprehension the gathering of distant storm 
clouds, or with joy the magnificent sunsets ; and 
learned to descry with accuracy u the tattered 
vapors" of a far vanishing or approaching train. 
One unlooked-for benefit was seldom wanting. Pieces 
of bark and splinters of wood were constantly drop- 
ping from the wood and lumber laden freight trains, 
and the minister, as became one on whom was the 
responsibility of obtaining kindling for summer fires, 
seldom returned to his cabin without a few fagots 
which had been scattered along the track through 
the day, apparently for this particular use. 

These excursions served well the purpose sought, 
in yielding health and strength ; and insensibly the 
taste for breathing beneath the sky grew upon one, 
until sometimes the close little surroundings of our 
cabin home seemed for a time to shut in the soul, 
which longed to throw off every shell and expand 
its pinions unfettered in those glorious spaces without. 

4 'Can you help me to find a place in Kansas?" 



Summer Diversions. 79 

once wrote an eastern minister to his brother at the 
front. " Come on," responded the westerner ; " Kan- 
sas is all place ." 

So with our new world. It was " all place," and 
space had new meanings to us, if not new definitions. 



I 



CHAPTER XI. 

TEMPERANCE. 

ARGE and unfinished as was the schoolhouse, 
it was the first and only place suitable for the 
weekly church prayer meeting, which was begun as 
soon as the building could be occupied. But a 
woman's prayer meeting was also needed. This was 
begun in our own little room. After the first one 
or two of these meetings the proposition was made 
and carried, that it should be once a month a mis- 
sionary meeting, and once a month a temperance 
prayer meeting. The missionary prayer meeting soon 
grew into an organized woman's missionary society, 
studying and giving to home and foreign missions 
alternately, though it was a "day of small things" 
as to numbers and gifts. It was felt that if our 
benefactions to others must at present be small, we 
could not afford that they should be irregular, and 
that the reflex influence of our small endeavors would 
be priceless to ourselves* as a church and as individ- 
uals. The same little band of women, in this same 
little room, soon organized a Woman's Christian Tem- 
perance Union, the first in the county. This meeting 

80 



Temperance. 81 

attracted some who did not come to the other prayer 
meetings, and it rapidly grew in interest. The county 
government had been organized about two years, with 
a majority of its supervisors temperance men. But 
on the eastern boundary was a village of foreigners, 
and many others were immigrating whose votes might 
soon change the character of the no-license adminis- 
tration. One of our neighbors was a drinking man, 
who now was obliged to send beyond the bounds of 
the large county for his supply of stimulants. Others, 
young men, had mothers, sisters, wives, who came 
to this meeting, willing and anxious to help in any 
strengthening of the sentiment in favor of keeping 
the dreaded saloon from the village. Several of our 
parishioners were strong temperance workers, and 
altogether there was hope that this village and county 
might be kept, as from the first, free from the temp- 
tations of the saloon. But it was plain that this 
could only be done by combined and vigorous work 
on the part of the friends of total abstinence. A 
general County Temperance Society had previously 
been organized, and now its quarterly meeting was 
invited to our town. The finished lower room of 
the schoolhouse accommodated the two sessions, and 
the unfinished upper room afforded a convenient place 
in which to spread the tables for the noontide refresh- 
ments. The following program was carried out : — 



82 Service in the King's Guards. 

After the opening exercises, with brief welcome 
and response, the first topic was presented: " The 
Relation of the Liquor Traffic to the Business of 
any Locality." Fifteen minutes was the time assigned 
to the gentleman who presented this subject, and three 
volunteer five-minute speeches followed. This was 
the general plan for each subject discussed. 

4 ' The Attitude of our Scandinavian Population 
toward Temperance Reform " was presented in two 
phases ; two Scandinavians speaking on the sub- 
divisions, u How they view the subject," and two on 
" What they propose to do." A half hour on " Pro- 
hibition Clause in State Constitution," by a leading 
lawyer, closed the forenoon. 

The afternoon meeting was opened by an excellent 
poem by one of our temperance women. This was 
followed by a consideration of the question, " How 
Far Does Prohibition Prohibit ? " and the remainder 
of the afternoon was given to a paper on u The Rela- 
tion of the Common Schools to Temperance " ; to 
a discussion of " The Relation of the Liquor Traffic 
to National Education " ; and to a closing general 
discussion of u The Outlook in Our County." Good 
speakers were not wanting in all these discussions, 
a local quartet rendered some inspiring music, and 
it was felt that a strong impulse had been given to 
the right by the day's proceedings. 



Temperance. 83 

Our new church was enclosed and lathed, but with- 
out seats, doors, or windows. Chairs were brought 
in to accommodate the women of the county, who had 
gathered in considerable numbers on this occasion, 
in accordance with the invitation of the local 
Women's Christian Temperance Union, to consider 
the question of organizing a County Woman's Union. 
This was the first service ever held in our church, and 
we were glad that the prayers and songs and delib- 
erations of Christian women should thus hallow it 
in advance of its public consecration. All present 
were in favor of forming an organization, not because 
they did not know well the difficulties of carrying on 
organized work over a great extent of sparsely 
settled territory in the embarrassing conditions of 
life in a new country, but because they solemnly felt 
the greatness of the issue and the need of combined 
strength. The constitution was adopted, its previ- 
ously prepared articles having been discussed seriatim, 
members' signatures obtained, officers elected by 
ballot, and a course of effort outlined for the 
next two months. The year-old baby of the presi- 
dent pro tern, was cared for by a friend who was 
present during the meeting, and toddled about the 
floor during the exercises without disturbing them. 
This lady continued to serve the organization as a 
most efficient officer, doing a full share of the work 



84 Service in the King's Guards. 

of a hard and toilsome campaign, without neglecting 
her housework and the care of her little one, in which 
she had most of the time no assistance. 

The collation promised the friends abroad if they 
would come to this meeting was a formidable under- 
taking in these new conditions and with the limited 
range of food supplies. But it was at the end of 
summer, and garden vegetables on this virgin soil were 
excellent. Our own garden had been one of our great 
disappointments. The whole extent of the parish was 
gladly laid under contribution to " furnish forth" this 
feast, which was spread on long carpenter's benches 
covered with sheets in the unfinished upper room. 

The cheer and blessing which attended this social 
reunion of a county large enough to form a small 
state cannot be described. Many who had hitherto 
stood aloof from the church and its aims now came, 
with a will, to help in this undertaking in which the 
church was the recognized leader. All separated 
before nightfall with new hope and strength for the 
work. 

It was now two months before the fall elections, 
and there were indications that a close vote would be 
taken on the temperance issue. The members of the 
County Convention planned and carried out a canvass, 
by school districts, of the whole county. For weeks 
that autumn, in dark as well as in moonlight evenings, 



Temperance. 85 

the minister accompanied one and another of his asso- 
ciates in the work, who went to hold neighborhood 
meetings in the little schoolhouses, or in smaller pri- 
vate houses, wherever a few neighbors could be got 
together on the wide prairie, to talk over the need of 
temperance legislation, the hopefulness of it in this new 
country. Every man was urged to do his duty. 

The women of the new County Christian Temper- 
ance Union addressed themselves without delay to the 
help of their husbands and brothers. They issued 
an address to the voters, which was circulated for 
women's signatures in every school district of the 
county, at untold cost of toil and pains. It obtained 
the signatures of a large majority of the women resi- 
dent in the county. The brief appeal to which the 
signatures were attached read thus : — 

" A foe more terrible threatens our county than the 
fires which, fanned by high winds, are now sweeping 
over our prairies ! All the years, we, mothers, wives, 
and sisters, have ivorked to make the fire breaks wide 
and strong about our homes, 

11 Voters of this County, will you, by voting 6 For 
License/ fan this horrible fire of Satan's own building 
into a conflagration which, respecting no bounds, may 
overleap our widest breaks, or will you smother it with 
the might of your ' No License ' ballots to-day V 

Two letters were received by the corresponding 



86 Service in the King's Guards. 

secretary at this time; the first throws u side lights" 
on the difficulties of securing the proper printing of the 
signatures, and the other that of bringing about con- 
ference of the officers, either through the mails, or in 
attendance at the appointed meetings. 

Dear Mrs. : The printer has jumbled the order of the 

signatures in a most unaccountable manner, to my great 
annoyance, and doubtless to that of yourself and others. I 
carefully copied the names of all those received in time, plac- 
ing the name of the particular vice-president at the end of 
the list which showed the result of her canvass. I hoped 
in this way to keep the names grouped in the order of the 
various localities where they belonged ; also, to give credit 
to the workers for what they had done; but the printer 
jumbled the list from the very first, forgetting even the 
direction to reserve the names of officers other than vice- 
presidents for the very last of the list. 

We do not wish to " tie up " our dear Mrs. in any way, 

as she is the only one of us all who is blessed with u freedom 
of speech." We all become so mum in meeting, although 
we chatter like magpies before and after u meeting" is 
done. 

The second correspondent wrote, under two dates a 
week apart : — 

%t I have succeeded in obtaining twenty-four signatures, 
and hasten to forward them. You know our neighborhood 
is in its infancy. But we are thoroughly awake to the 
importance of early and efficient action on the subject of 
temperance, and are ever ready to do what we can to aid 
the cause. 



Temperance. 87 

" Later. I prepared the foregoing hasty report, expect- 
ing to be able to send immediately to the post office (ten 
miles distant) . But being disappointed in that, I expected to 
see you, of course, at the county meeting on the 1st instant. 
But alas for our expectations! The inevitable threshing 
machine appeared unannounced on the morning of that 
day, and men and horses were pressed into the service, 
while we were suddenly transformed from prospective 
delegates into cooks. Obliged to stay at home, and not 
seeing any one from our neighborhood who was going to 
the post office, we have been unable to send our mail. 

"But expecting all our ' men folks' to go and vote No 
License to-morrow, I will send this, although probably too 
late to do any good." 

Very few women were reluctant to sign the address. 
The wives of drunkards, and of husbands who were 
surreptitiously trying to sell liquors outside the bound- 
ary lines of the county for consumption within, readily 
and gladly appended their signatures. Temperance 
columns in our village and county papers were regu- 
larly filled every week with matter, mainly original, by 
women of our organization, often displaying no mean 
order of literary ability. 

One of the articles drew an outline of the logic of 
license to steal chickens as a parallel to the reasoning 
of advocates of liquor license, in the form of an im- 
aginary monologue as follows : — 



88 Service in the King's Guards. 

A CHARCOAL SKETCH. 

" Yes, sah ; I prides myself on my fam'ly guv'ment, 
I does ! I 'se raised a powerful lot o' pickaninnies, 
an' dere am no mo' 'speetable color'd folks in dese 
pants dan me an' my fam'ly. 

u Robbin' chicken roosts? Yes, sah; yes, sah! I 
mus' 'fess some o' dat am done by a po'tion ob my 
highly 'speetable fam'ly. But I reflates dat, sah ! 
I 'se proud ob my fam'ly guv'ment. I has mos' 'mark- 
able success dat way. No pusson 'spises stealin' mo' 
dan I do. But, sah, I does n't like to interfere with 
chillun's pussonal liberty ! An' believin' in maintainin' 
de dignity ob de fam'ly guv'ment, I puts on my silver- 
bowed specs, an' my most joodishal mannah, an' I 
solemnly says to dat 'spectable po'tion ob my picka- 
ninnies as ingages in de puffession ob robbin' hen- 
roosts, ' Chilluns, I 'spects ye to gib me four ob dem 
pullets ye hooked las' night, if ye 'spects to be 'lowed 
to continue your puffession ob robbin' henroosts an- 
nudder week. I 'spects an' 'sists on yer pu'vidin' 
me with fifty nice spring chickens afo' I can gib yer 
my pummission to continue yer pu'suits de nex' six 
months.' . . 

" Yes, sah ; yes, sah ! It certainly do hab de effec' 
to make dem chilluns mighty industrious in cle business 
ob chicken-stealin' ; for in addishun to dere or'nary 
av'rage haul puh annum, dey has to steal dat fifty 



Temperance. 89 

pair o' chickens which I 'sists on havin' dem fu'nish 
fo' my pussonal dinnah pail ! . . . 

" Dat am bery true, miss — eb'ry one o' dem nice 
fowls my da'hter raised an' had when you was heah 
befo' has been stole too. . . . 

" Yes, miss ; her heart am done broked. But laws, 
miss ; dat Dinah am a mighty onreasonable chile ! 
She am dat stupid an' dat fanatical, she acfcooaly 
'spects me to 'fere wid dem- same boys' pussonal 
liberty to steal her mis'abul, no 'count chickens ! But, 
miss, dis am a free country ! An' dem boys has a 
license to steal chickens ! No, sah ; I don' pay much 
'tention to dat Dinah's fanatical howlin' 'bout her 
claims to puhtection from me. . . . 

"Yes, sah; dose young puhsons in dat bed in de 
corner were 'ruptecl in de midst o' dere puffessional 
duties by a savage dog. Dey has no mo' good clo'es 
to w'ar to Sunday-school ; dey 's be'n laid up in bed 
mos' two months ; de doctah charges right smart foh 
comin' ; all dis, sah, am de consequence ob dat rude 
interruption by dat meddlin' dog — all dis, sah, 'sides 
my bein' puhsonally dis'pointed 'bout dat pahticklah 
chicken stew. . . . 

" Yes, sah; yes, sah; lawin' do cost a heap. I 'se 
had to pay costs an' 'fend my chicken-stealin' chilluns 
afo' de Justice ob de Peace 'gainst dese fanatical neigh- 
bo's mo' times dis yeah dan I 'se got black fingers. . . . 



90 Service in the King's Guards. 

" Yes ; I pays board bills fo' some o' my chilluns 
too, 'casionally, at de jail. 

"No, sah ; I 'se not goin' to hab chicken pie fo' 
suppah to-night. Dem boys is mighty sharp, sah. 
De fac' am, I don' get a chance to pick an' cook a 
fowl bery of n now'days. No, sah ; not so ofn as 
when I used to spank dem pickaninnies right smart 
de minit dey meddled wi' oder folk's t'ings — an' ebery 
time, jes' as sure as dey 's bawn. . . 

4 ' Mos' wish I had stuck to dat policy ob my cibil 
guv'ment, sah ! . . . 

"My wife am right smart at figgers too. She 'grees 
wi' you mos' 'zactly. She says I pay mo' dan thirty 
dollahs apiece fo' each o' dem pullets dose little thiev- 
in' black rascals fu'nish fo' my pussonal dinner pail ! 
I fought, dough, as dem pickaninnies would steal 
any way, I might as well hab part. But, sah, I 
always has, an' always shall, believe in maintainin' 
de dignity ob de fam'ly guv'ment. An' I 'se mighty 
fond o' chicken pie, sah." 

When the day for voting approached, our school- 
house was made the voting place for our district. Our 
village Women's Christian Temperance Union prepared 
a warm lunch, hot coffee, and No-License votes for 
free distribution. The lunch was spread on a long 
counter at one side of the large room and proved 
most welcome, as the day was stormy and many had 



Temperance. 91 

come a long distance. Suspended from the ceiling 
was the word " Welcome " in large letters, beneath 
which were attached the well-known initials of the 
union. In a corner hung the old flag, with the mot- 
toes, "Vote to Save our Boys," and " For God and 
Home and Native Land." Appropriate Bible texts 
were written on the blackboards all around the room. 
From behind the counter the ladies served all day, 
modestly, yet cordially and affably, letting the mottoes 
on the wall and blackboards do most of the preaching. 
At a second election, the year after, although not 
legal voters, the women of the precinct were invited 
to come on the voting day and number themselves by 
casting informal votes, of a color and style specially 
prepared for them, in a box of their own, to be 
counted when the day was over. As before, free 
lunch was served by the Woman's Union and the 
room handsomely and suggestively decorated. Most 
of the women came out through the storm. One 
had ridden seven miles to give her vote. Another, 
an aged woman of foreign birth, who could speak 
little or no English, came as chaperon to a whole 
bevy of maidens, the entire company voting with 
a right good will. One mother carrying her tiny 
babe was there ; but the girls under voting age had 
been scattered about the town as improvised nurses, 
in order to release mothers from the care of their 
children while they came to vote. 



92 Service in the King's Guards. 

In the first election there was found to be a 
majority of one hundred and four legal votes in 
favor of No License, and the victory was won for 
that time. The temperance men of the county pub- 
licly thanked the women for their help, without which, 
they affirmed, the result could not have been secured. 

In the second election the women's votes, counted 
separately by the judges of election, had, of course, 
none except a moral value. There were sixty-one 
against license, and not one for it. 

One wrote of the occasion : — 

"The meeting (at the polls) was attended with all 
the courtesy, on the part of the gentlemen, of a 
refined social gathering. ... A staid Presbyterian so- 
ciable could not have been more quiet and orderly." 

On the circulation of a petition by those who de- 
sired license, the second election had been ordered 
unexpectedly, with very limited time intervening, in 
an unusually stormy winter. But the energetic com- 
batants of the saloon wrought with intensity and 
adaptation equal to the emergency, and the county 
was saved to the cause of temperance. One of the 
ladies, who had been quietly efficient here, afterwards 
removed to another county, and with her husband 
and other workers was instrumental in securing a 
like result there. 



CHAPTER XII. 

OUR FIRST MEETING WITH THE INDIAN MISSION. 

NOT far from this time the annual meeting of 
a large association of Indian churches gave 
opportunity for an interesting visit. At a central 
point some hundreds of Christianized Indians gath- 
ered, five sixths of them communicants in their vari- 
ous mission churches. Many resided in the neigh- 
borhood of the church where the meeting was held, 
which was not a long journey from our home. 
Many others had traveled, with their ponies and tent 
equipage, men, women, children, and dogs, from one 
hundred to four hundred miles, in order to be present 
on this occasion. Some were from Santee agency and 
some from Yankton agency ; some from the Sisseton 
reservation ; some from the region of Fort Sully, 
and some from Fort Berthold on the Upper Missouri. 
There were Poncas, Yanktons, Santee Sioux, Teeton 
Sioux, and others, with representatives of those more 
uncivilized tribes, the Gros Ventres and the Mandans. 
The time of the meeting was in beautiful September 
weather. The hour of nine a.m. saw a company of 
missionaries ascending a long hill which is crowned 

93 



94 Service in the King's Guards. 

by a neat Indian church. Indian men, women, and 
children, on foot and in wagons, were coming from 
every direction- We entered the white church while 
its bell was tolling the hour for the meeting. The 
audience room was ceiled overhead and on the sides 
with narrow matched boards, which, with the remain- 
der of the woodwork, were painted in quiet shades of 
brown and drab. The painted floor was clean and 
shining, and fresh air freely circulated through the 
open windows. Three chandeliers, of two globes 
each, hung over the central aisle, and there were a 
number of reflecting side lamps. Two small semi- 
circular platforms, carpeted and surrounded by a rail- 
ing, were at the end opposite the door ; one at the 
termination of the central aisle supported the pulpit, 
and the other, at its left, held the cabinet organ. 
Behind the main platform hung a piece of white 
cardboard, on which was painted a beautiful cross 
surrounded by callas and water lilies, with a margin 
of brilliant autumn leaves painted beneath the motto, 
in the Dakota language, " Come unto me." On one 
side was a blackboard framed in rustic pine, on which 
a topic for discussion was written in Dakota, with 
an English translation — ' ' Why are there so few who 
attend church? " 

The meeting opens with missionary John P. Wil- 
liamson in the chair, the native pastor of the church 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 95 

acting as secretary. A hymn is sung and prayer 
offered in the Dakota, which is the language used in 
all the exercises. The minutes of the previous meet- 
ing are read, and the roll of delegates called, to which 
there are many responses. The church is gradually 
filling up, until the extra seats are all used, and many 
dark faces are looking in from the vestibule. A 
majority of the audience are men, but there are many 
women, and not a few babies. 

Yesterday their three days' meeting opened ; to-day 
they are fully under way. The question under discus- 
sion enlists remarks from a number of the men. 
Some rise in their seats and address the president ; 
some go forward and face the audience. All speak 
readily and fluently, but without that impression of 
extreme rapidity of utterance commonly made on the 
ear in listening to a language not understood. At the 
request of the president now and again, prayer is 
offered by some one in the congregation. The native 
pastor accompanies the first hymn on the organ ; 
later, Mr. Alfred Riggs serves as organist. Nearly 
every one has a Dakota hymn book ; all sing, and 
sing well. 

A second topic is written on the board, in Dakota 
and in English: " The new birth — what is it?" This 
subject awakens much interest. A number speak 
earnestly ; some, whose words evidently command 



96 Service in the King's Guards. 

respect, are old men from whose features the imprint 
of savage life will never be erased, although they now 
are " clothed and in their right mind," and awake to 
spiritual truth. Others are fine specimens of man- 
hood, whose quick glance, active play of feature, and 
pertinent gestures indicate corresponding mental agil- 
ity, and doubtless tell tales of a generation or two of 
Christianity behind them. The faces of some of the 
younger men are manly and attractive. Christianity 
and education are already giving ocular demonstration 
of their power. 

The elder Riggs rises to speak. Not yet a very 
aged man, his white hair and benevolent aspect win 
reverence, and his lifetime of service commands the 
gratitude and affection of the Indians. The audi- 
ence has not been listless or inattentive hitherto, 
but now a pleased bustle stirs the congregation as Dr. 
Riggs ascends the platform, and while he speaks the 
audience are attent — u arrectis auribus." 

The accusation that the Indians are treacherous and 
ungrateful can never command the unqualified assent 
of one who looked upon the faces of that audience as 
the lifelong benefactor of their race rose to address 
them. If they could have known that this was — as it 
proved to be — the last annual meeting to be blessed 
with the gracious presence of this holy man, they 
could scarcely have demonstrated more clearly, though 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 97 

unconsciously, their gratitude for the blessing of his 
life among them. 

Another hymn, and the next topic is taken up : 
the Iapa Oaye (Word Carrier), their own periodical. 
Their fondness for their paper is marked. A few, like 
eager children, are unable to restrain their curiosity to 
see the pages of the fresh number they hold in their 
hands until the close of the meeting. Rev. Alfred 
Riggs energetically sets forth the need of more money 
in the management of the paper. Some money is 
handed him. Holding it up he says that will enable it 
to go on a week or two, but they must provide more. 
A stalwart, well-dressed man rises in his seat, ad- 
dresses a few brief words to the audience, seizes his 
hat and passes it for a collection. This large-framed 
Indian, now a converted man, and for years past the 
faithful, consistent pastor of a native church, is said 
to have been among the bloodiest warriors of the 
bloody Minnesota massacres of 1862. He gathers a 
goodly sum, in money and subscriptions, while the 
discussion over the paper proceeds. The assembly, 
which has been so grave during the earlier discussions 
of the day as to suggest the thought that an Indian 
never laughs, is now often swept by a gust of laughter 
at some witty sally. After the adjournment at noon a 
woman, plainly dressed, brings forth from her knotted 
handkerchief a small pile of silver dollars and half 



98 Service in the King's Guards. 

dollars, which are duly counted out on the pulpit and 
given to the editor. Surely the paper is rich in the 
affections of its Indian constituency, if in no other 
respect. 

The first hour of the afternoon was spent in the 
discussion of the topic, " Firstfruits for the Lord," in 
which the scriptural ground for such offerings was 
thoroughly treated by a native Christian. So carefully 
had practice accompanied preaching among these 
simple-minded, well-trained Indian converts, that their 
offerings that year aggregated about nine hundred 
dollars toward the w T ork of carrying the gospel they 
love to the heathen Indians, and the women alone 
contributed in the succeeding year between four and 
five hundred dollars toward the same object. The 
one hundred and twenty members of the church enter- 
taining this meeting had contributed the year previous 
more than four hundred dollars toward its support. 

After the first hour of the afternoon the brethren 
adjourned their meeting to the schoolhouse in the 
village, in order to give place to a kind of Indian 
Woman's Board meeting in the church. 

At three o'clock a cloud of dusky faces gradually 
filled the audience room. The woman who had 
served as president for the last two years took the 
chair, without boldness, without hesitation. She read 
a chapter from her Dakota Bible ; then, reverently 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 99 

standing, offered prayer. More than a hundred 
Indian Christian women were gathered here. On the 
faces of most of them the impress of ages of hea- 
thenism was more apparent to a casual observer than 
the radiance of the " new creature in Christ Jesus." 
There was visible from our point of view but one 
pretty face in the room — that of a young mother, 
who looked scarcely twenty. Her face was beautiful, 
with regular features, pleasant eyes, smooth bands of 
black hair drawn away from the forehead, and a trans- 
parent look to the dark skin. A touch of delicacy 
and fine taste had adjusted the ruffles at her neck and 
the folds of the scarlet shawl thrown about her shoul- 
ders. She listened with intelligent attention, mean- 
time keeping her baby quiet by deft, motherly ways. 
Like nearly all the rest she wore no covering but 
nature's own upon her head. The few hats or bon- 
nets in the congregation were worn only by girls or 
younger women, 'and could be numbered on one's 
fingers. To wear one is the last thing an Indian 
woman can bring herself to do. All wear the hair in 
one fashion, plaited in loose bands hanging straight 
down on either side, except occasionally an elderly 
woman, or one in mourning, who wears it disheveled 
after the old custom. 

Shawls were universal, those in wide gay stripes 
seeming to have the preference, though bright woolen 



100 Service in the King's Guards. 

plaids were also favorites. Some of the older women 
were dressed in decorous black, and one had a fine, 
soft shawl of black cashmere with silken fringe. The 
dresses were mostly of bright-colored prints in strik- 
ing patterns, interspersed with a few of quiet brown 
woolen stuff and black alpacas. A plain bodice and 
a straight full skirt with flounce at the bottom was 
the prevailing fashion. Moccasins were seen more 
frequently than shoes. 

A serene, benevolent face in the midst of the 
audience was bending affectionately over a baby. It 
must have been her grandchild, for she fondled it with 
a kiss, and spoiled it after the most approved grand- 
motherly fashion. About every fifth woman had a 
babe in her arms. It cannot be that the race is dying 
out ! Sometimes the little ones fretted, or cried lus- 
tily, but this seemed to disturb neither mothers nor 
missionaries. Rarely was one taken out for the sake 
of quiet. A woman near the front, in a red and 
black plaid shawl and a showy dress, rose to make 
her speech. The babe in her arms had been asleep, 
and was rather suddenly awakened by its mother's 
change of posture. It nestled good-naturedly at first, 
when it was summarily changed to the other arm. 
Then it fretted a little, gaining no attention, and 
finally burst into a loud and steady wail ; but all the 
while the mother talked on without a ripple of embar- 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 101 

rassnient, and seemingly unconscious that there was 
a baby in the world. 

The children were a study by themselves. The 
unmistakable Indian features of some would not allow 
one, in looking at them, to forget the race question. 
But many were pretty little things, with bright black 
eyes and soft black hair, well-rounded cheeks, tiny 
hands, and engaging baby ways, not omitting the 
infantile manner of expressing displeasure by throw- 
ing the body back and stiffening the limbs, which is 
not confined to aboriginal babies. One thing was 
noticeable : however poorly the mother might be 
dressed, however marked the struggle which had been 
necessary with her to put on the garb of civilization, 
the little ones were all well dressed. The true 
mother's heart-beat was beneath the uncouth exterior 
— her baby should not be behind the best-dressed of 
her neighbors' ! The little prints in baby patterns 
were delicate in color, the white bibs and aprons neat 
as need be, the tiny sunbonnets well ruffled, the little 
morocco shoes bright and gay. One outshone the 
rest in the dignity of a lace bonnet with blue ribbons, 
while another had a unique blanket in the form of a 
cradle quilt, pieced in red and green. One mother 
came into the meeting with her little one carried on 
her back in papoose fashion . All the others were car- 
ried in the mother's arms, and enfolded in her shawl. 



102 Service in the King's Guards. 

The spirit of the meeting was earnest, although a 
ripple of laughter passed along sometimes when a 
particularly bright remark was made. In the midst of 
the proceedings, at the request of the missionary 
lady, who, as secretary of the meeting, was guiding 
its helm, a woman in the audience reverently offered 
prayer, while the whole company bowed their heads. 
Occasionally they sang, in excellent time and tune, 
with the organ accompanying, sometimes an old stand- 
ard favorite, sometimes a modern "Gospel hymn." 
All sang, some with, and some without, a Dakota 
hymn book. 

It was the time for the election of officers. They 
saw no reason for rotation in office. "Why do you 
throw my aunt, my cousin, away? Has she not 
served you well? " 

" Yes," the missionary replied. u But it is better 
that others should have an opportunity to learn to 
serve also. We will now vote for a new president for 
the coming year." Nominations were made from 
various parts of the house — sometimes two or three 
were on their feet at once, endeavoring to get the 
attention of the imperturbable president. The secre- 
tary called the roll of the delegates, recording the vote 
of each opposite her name. None but one who had 
spent years among them could have held the meeting 
steady at this juncture, while the bewildering votes 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 103 

which named the candidates as " my aunt," " my 
cousin, " came thick and fast, leaving the indefati- 
gable secretary to glance first at the speaker, then at 
the relative indicated, and then to follow her own 
intuitions in recording the vote. 

At last it was all settled. Mrs. Renville was 
elected president ; Mrs. Morris was reelected secre- 
tary. The new president, on taking the chair, was 
greeted by a hand shake from the secretary. The 
retiring president, who wore a fresh blue print dress, 
dotted with tiny stars like snow flakes, and a clean 
blue and green plaid shawl, vacated her chair and 
descended to the audience, but had scarcely taken her 
new seat when she rose, and advancing to the chair, 
greeted the new dignitary with a grave bow and a 
polite shake of the hand, without words, and returned 
to her lower seat, passing through this ordeal with 
Christian courtesy and self-forgetfulness. A few of 
the older women followed her example in greeting the 
new president, and then the main business of the 
meeting went on — that of hearing reports of dele- 
gates from the various societies represented. 

The delegates spoke fluently and briefly, but when 
the time came near for the meeting to close, the busi- 
ness was not finished. "How shall we ever get 
through what we have to say ? " they asked of the 
secretary. But she held out no hope that another 
opportunity of a hearing would be granted this year. 



104 Service in the King's Guards. 

At last, good " Louise," of the Sisseton society, 
rose to speak of their year 's work. Her animated 
face and voice told us no tales, for they were soft 
Dakota accents which fell on our ears. Our eyes 
followed the gesture of her red hand as she waved it 
toward the open window beside which we sat. We 
looked out, beyond this Indian church on the hilltop, 
away over the beautiful valley with its winding river 
and its fringe of trees ; over the lovely hills stretching 
far, far away under the light of the westering sun, 
and then in the opposite direction, to where the fair 
harvest moon hung like a silvery apparition in the 
eastern sky, and mused on the past, the present, and 
the future of these children of the great All-Father, 
and of the self-denying and successful work of these 
missionaries, until the summons of the closing hymn 
and prayer cut short our meditations, and the cloud 
of dusky faces melted away. 

In the evening the missionaries gathered by them- 
selves in a private room, to transact the annual 
business of the mission. Here was a family party 
— the venerable Dr. Riggs, from Sisseton; his two 
sons, Alfred, from Santee agency, Thomas, from 
Fort Sully ; his daughter and son-in-law, Mr. and 
Mrs. Morris, of Sisseton. Here also was John P. 
Williamson, of Yankton agency, faithful son of a 
venerated sire, giving his life, like the younger 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 105 

Riggses, to the race for which the father toiled. 
The moderator of the meeting was Charles L. Hall, 
from the lonely outpost at far-away Fort Berthold. 
Lady missionaries from the Santee agency, on the 
Nebraska side of the Missouri, were here also. 

The venerable head of the mission had borne a 
large share in reducing the Sioux language to a 
written form, preparing a printed alphabet, and pub- 
lishing books for the use of the Indians. Long 
journeys eastward had he taken to superintend the 
printing of these books, when the region west of 
Lake Michigan was still a wilderness. When half a 
dozen log huts marked the site of the city of St. 
Paul, forty years before, he had been there to note 
them. He had made the Dakota dictionary, which, 
after critical examination by Professor C. C. Felton, 
of Harvard College, and Professor Joseph Henry, of 
the Smithsonian Institution, had been accepted and 
printed by the United States government. He had 
lived with his family among the Indians when the 
outbreak of 1862 occurred, and they had all escaped 
with their lives by the help of friendly Indians, but 
through the greatest hardships. He had subse- 
quently acted as interpreter for the government dur- 
ing the trial and imprisonment of the Indians im- 
plicated in the massacres. He had baptized and 
received to the church many of the converted Indi- 



106 Service in the King's Guards. 

ans, and had assisted in the organization of most 
of their churches. He had done the greater part of 
the work of translating the whole Bible into the 
Dakota language, and had rendered material assist- 
ance in the preparation of the Indian hymn book. 
The literary work of his life was represented by 
more than fifty books, consisting of translations and 
original writings in connection with Dakota history, 
customs, and language. He had been one of a 
committee of three from the general assembly of the 
Presbyterian church to present to Congress the need 
of securing to Indians the rights of white men, and 
was the author of the Memorial to the Senate on 
that occasion. He had lived on the small salary of 
a missionary, and had educated at college and semi- 
nary a large family of sons and daughters, five of 
whom were now following his example in devoting 
themselves to missionary work. These things were 
matters of public knowledge, and were recorded by 
the public press. 

He was now looked to on account of his great 
experience as general executive for the whole work. 
As the discussion of this evening hour went forward, 
over Bibles, primers, grammars, dictionaries — over 
plans for the work of the year to come, it was pleas- 
ing to note how the gentle words of the elder man, 
and his mellowness of spirit, mantled the scene ; how 



First Meeting with the Indian Mission. 107 

he gave an impulse here, interposed a caution there, 
following always the ; * things that make for peace," 
without surrendering the convictions which time had 
strengthened and ripened. Ere another such occa- 
sion, his glorified spirit was to look down from the 
heavenly heights on the work which he had so loved. 
If we had known this then, we could not have wished 
this closing hour to be other than it was, when the 
little company united in a precious hymn of penitence 
and aspiration, and joined in a closing prayer, in 
which all personal interests were forgotten, as the 
beloved work, in its various aspects, was commended 
to the care of Him in whose hands are the hearts of 
all the children of men. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

ANOTHER FIELD. OUR CHURCH HOME. 

riniME had flown, not on leaden wings. Great 
-^- changes and additions had come to the little 
community. The schoolhouse and the church were 
each in use — the latter a beautiful building, one of 
the earliest on a line of railroad several hundred 
miles in extent. The membership of the church was 
doubled, the first service in the new edifice having wit- 
nessed a communion, the baptism of the teacher of 
the school, and the reception of several new members. 
Moral sentiment was reinforced, the foundations of 
society seemed securely laid in intelligence, morality, 
and religion, and in the small but choice membership 
of the church were men who were, to all good enter- 
prises, a tower of strength, known as such far beyond 
the bounds of their own community. A call came to 
the pastor to go to what had the reputation of being 
" the wickedest town in the territory." Of this place 
*a " missionary scout" had thus written of his first 
visit, three years before : — 

" It consists of one dwelling house, one hotel, one 
store, and eight saloons, all built last week. Looking 

108 



Another Field. 109 

down the street, a creature calling herself a woman is 
seen coming up like a wild Arab, sitting on her horse 
like a man, wearing a man's wide-rimmed, slouched 
hat. After saluting the newcomers, away she dashes 
and is quickly out of sight. Presently two men, filled 
with bad whiskey, come from one of the saloons, and 
as they too must create a little sensation, one of them 
pulls off his hat and holds it out at arm's length, 
while the other blazes away at it with his pistol and 
puts through it several bullet holes." 

It was now a "river town," the site of a former 
United States fort, garrisoned with a view to "regu- 
lating " the fur trade and the hostile Indians, a promi- 
nent place of departure for the Black Hills, and a 
rendezvous of cow-boys, freighters, and many char- 
acters seen only on the extreme verge of civilization. 

Residents of the place confirmed its reputation, as 
to the first year or two of its history. When a lonely 
hillside on the "bench," or terrace above the river, 
held the first fourteen graves, eleven of them were 
those of men who had died violent deaths. " It was 
no uncommon thing," said a gentleman who had gone 
there at an early stage of the settlement, " to hear the 
snapping of pistols twenty times a night." 

This reputation still clung to the place, and many 
sought to dissuade us from going. " I do not believe 
you can live there," "I am sure you will not like it," 



110 Service in the King's Guards. 

said one and another, after the minister had deliber- 
ately announced his intention of accepting the call. 

With regret, but under clear convictions of duty, 
we prepared to sunder the bonds which united us in 
labor and fellowship to this community. The minis- 
ter had paid a visit or two of reconnoissance to the 
new field. It was such a state of society as we had 
never seen before. So promising was the location, 
and so high the expectations of the future of the 
place, that business men had gathered to it since the 
railroad had reached it, in many instances bringing 
their families. Notwithstanding the fact that some 
of the early elements of society remained, clustered 
along the shores of the river, sufficient to preserve 
its early reputation to those at a distance, it was a 
bustling town of fifteen hundred inhabitants, a large 
majority of whom were self-respecting, law-abiding 
citizens. The little church was hearty and united in 
the call, and the "open door" and the need of Chris- 
tian work were very great. The church was composed 
of thirteen members, about half of whom lived in the 
town ; the others were scattered on the prairie, or 
were " absent. " A church building had been felt to 
be a necessity, and had been just completed by the 
help of outside parties here and at the east, but had 
been, only a few weeks before, in danger of being 
sold on a carpenter's lien, while the pastorless little 



Another Field. Ill 

church seemed almost entirely discouraged. A feel- 
ing of sympathy for them, a belief in the future of 
the place, and a clear sense of providential indica- 
tions, led the minister to listen to that call, although 
his visits had shown him enough of the conditions of 
life there to leave many perplexing questions unan- 
swered. He would yield to the voice of duty, ex- 
pecting the way to be cleared before him as he went 
forward. During the immediate preparations for mov- 
ing the wife asked, u What about a house to live in?" 
The minister could only reply, " I know of none." 

Our library had never been unpacked, and our other 
modest belongings were soon ready for the transfer. 
Kind friends met us at the station when we had 
reached our new field, and welcomed us to their own 
frontier home until we could decide how and where 
we were to live. 

With the temporary lifting of the mortgage on the 
church and the coming of a minister, they took heart, 
and hope painted a brighter future. A reception was 
given to the new pastor and his wife in the church, at 
which a large and hearty welcome to the town was 
offered. But the question of where he was to live 
found as yet no answer. At the frontier hotels of the 
place board could be obtained for the minister and 
his wife at about twenty dollars per week, with a cold * 
room, about eight by ten feet in dimensions, for a 



112 Service in the King's Guards. 

sleeping apartment, and no place for a study except 
the public reception room. This of course was not 
to be considered from any point of view. Private 
boarding places were out of the question, and equally 
bo was the possibility of renting a house. Five hun- 
dred miles from a base of lumber supply, with many 
families moving in and needing at once to construct 
their own shelter, and nowhere a room to spare, the 
case seemed hopeless as to any home at present. 
"There is but one alternative," said the minister to 
his wife, after a few days had passed — "either we 
must separate for the winter, you going east to your 
friends and I boarding at the hotel, or we must set 
up housekeeping in the end of the church." 

The first seemed a pity, for if ever two were needed 
for parish work they seemed to be here. The church 
edifice was in a form common in a new country, with 
a few feet at one end of the audience room cut off by 
folding doors into what is dignified by the name of a 
u lecture room" — a part of the church on Sundays, 
but heated and used by itself for prayer meetings and 
other small gatherings. 

The thoughts and questionings of previous days in 
a moment crystallized into an answer : We could live 
in the lecture room. The people were willing that we 
should, therefore we would. 

Some advantages there were over the frail tenement 



Another Field. 113 

that had previously been our home. There was a 
good stone foundation to the building, which was 
comparatively substantially built with brick chimneys 
and plastered walls — luxuries unknown before. But 
the reverse side of the picture showed a longer cata- 
logue of discomforts, as the experiment proved. 

It was Thanksgiving week, warm, bright, and with- 
out snow, when our goods arrived and we entered on 
the task of constructing a home out of this ct lecture 
room," twelve feet by twenty-four, which yet should 
not interfere with its legitimate uses for Sunday 
audience room, infant class room, and prayer meeting 
room. The walls were sixteen feet high, with one 
window twelve feet long on the southwest, and three 
of similar dimensions on the northwest, over which a 
great octagonal one of many lights rose into the gable. 
There was an anteroom six feet by twelve, on the 
northwest angle of the church, serving as entrance to 
both the church and lecture room, and in its ceiling 
containing a small opening to the attic and belfry 
which could only be reached by a temporary ladder. 
There was, of course, neither cellar, pantry, nor bed- 
room . 

The first thing to be thought of was the creation of 
a semblance of privacy. A partition of planed and 
matched boards, half the height of the room, was 
thrown across the end of the apartment, with a door 



114 Service in the King's Guards. 

in the middle. This on the further side gave us a 
space eight feet by twelve, which we called our bed- 
room. On the inside of the partition, either*side the 
door, a shelf was put up, affording convenience for 
stowing away things in baskets and pasteboard boxes 
against the two feet of partition above it ; while below, 
plenty of hooks for clothing, and a curtain hanging 
from each shelf over them, made our closets. With a 
comfortable carpet on the floor, a plain bedstead, 
bureau, washstand, and rocker, and neat and simple 
draperies, we felt quite rich as to a sleeping apartment. 

On the living and prayer meeting side of the parti- 
tion a series of graduated shelves was put up, which 
proved just sufficient for the pastor's library ; and 
when the books were unpacked and arranged where 
we could see their backs, the room, though bare and 
cold, looked already furnished. 

We well knew that the mud on that hillside without 
a sidewalk would sometimes be very deep, and that 
only a carpet of the strongest and most durable make 
would last through the winter before us, with the 
multiplied uses for the lecture room. A rag carpet 
made in strips by loving hands in a former parish to 
save wear of a better one when ladies' prayer meetings 
were daily held in the pastor's sitting room, now found 
its best use. It was laid on the floor of the room and 
proved large enough to cover it neatly. Our little 



Another Field. 115 

cook-stove was set up and made ornamental as possi- 
ble, shining and cozy, with a wood fire. A round 
table was wheeled into place, and the bed-lounge, 
supporting the wolf -skin, robe, a Boston rocking- 
chair, our eastern " sleepy-hollow" chair, and a few 
wooden chairs from the main audience room of the 
church completed our furnishing. A box of pictures, 
which we could not unpack, was placed in the vestibule 
and neatly draped for a table. Up the ladder to the 
attic went all superfluous household appurtenances, 
carpets, bedding, and so forth. One carpet, however, 
was retained, and tacked upon the cold, bare pulpit 
platform, which had a movable pulpit, recently 
obtained, but no other furniture except a common 
wooden chair. Shades had been placed at the church 
windows before we came, and so our little lecture room 
had a homelike look which was already attractive. 

If only we had not needed food ! Not a place for 
dishes, kettles, and pans ; not a nook which would 
preserve vegetables and cooked food from freezing ; 
not a drop of water on the premises, hard or soft. 
This last was, however, the common condition of the 
town. A quarter of a mile distant, at the foot of the 
bluffs, was the " Big Muddy," flowing in majesty, a 
mile wide. On its sandy bank was a well which 
received river water filtered through the sand, and 
from this, carts, fitted with tanks and hose, brought 



116 Service in the King's Guards. 

water for sale to every door. This necessitated a 
barrel in every house. We had a neat board recepta- 
cle with cover, fitted into one corner of the church 
entry. Inside of this was placed a large, strong iron- 
hooped barrel, the interspaces filled with rags and 
cotton, to protect the water, as far as possible, from 
freezing. Little flags, composed of small pieces of 
red flannel tacked to a stick, were displayed when 
water was required, which made the town, especially 
on Monday mornings, suggest scores of simultaneous 
auctions. One of these flags floated from a corner of 
the church whenever the water in the barrel got low, 
and could be seen from its eminence, far and near. 
While we could pay for it, water, that prime necessity, 
would not be Licking. Though not very soft, it was 
not very hard, and had but little trace of the alkali 
soil, and that was a great comfort. 

It was soon decided in our family councils, that, as 
everything was sure to freeze solid when the winter 
was fairly upon us, we would not, even if we had 
room, attempt to store food supplies, but would take 
our dinners at the hotel, preparing our simple 
morning and evening meals in our room, with tea or 
coffee, bread and butter, and quickly cooked cereals. 
But even a few dishes and these small supplies must 
have a place, and so must a few iron and tin utensils. 
A small cupboard was placed in the corner behind the 



Another Field. 117 

door, and amply draped with white mull. A shoe box 
was procured, draped with chintz, and a pretty brown 
enameled cloth tacked over the cover. Within this 
box, in the corner by the stove, were kept kettfe and 
stewpan, and on it stood the water pail. On the 
other side was a papered wood-box, twin to one 
prepared also for the main audience room, and against 
the closed folding doors leading into the church stood 
the pastor's study table, which must be removed and 
all its contents packed away as often as these doors 
were thrown open. How all this found room in a 
space twelve feet by sixteen seems now a problem ; 
but it did, and chairs were often brought in to seat 
twelve or fifteen persons besides. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THANKSGIVING. A YOUNG VISITOR. OUR NEW 

SURROUNDINGS. 

TT was the hard work of a week to make this home, 
-*- and the Thanksgiving service was interjected into 
the midst of it. No church bell called the people, but 
they were in a far-off land, and the very thought of a 
Thanksgiving service brought memories, to some, of 
dear old homes in the east ; and others were glad of any 
variety in their hard, monotonous, toiling lives. Not 
a large, but a cheerful and well-dressed congregation, 
gathered in the church and seemed to enjoy the privi- 
lege. We were invited to the hospitable roof which 
had first sheltered us, for our Thanksgiving dinner, 
and discussed our comfortable fare with cheery con- 
versation. The pastor announced his intention of 
having a prayer meeting in his lecture room home the 
next week, but the host replied, " You cannot keep up 
a prayer meeting in this town." " We will have a 
prayer meeting every Wednesday evening, " rejoined 
the pastor, " even though no one but my wife and my- 
self are present." From that time the prayer meeting 
was a fixed fact, and gathered, sometimes three, some- 

118 



Thanksgiving. 119 

times five or six, and sometimes a dozen or more to 
its sessions. 

This Thanksgiving day was so warm, that when 
after dinner we went farther up the bluffs for a walk 
and a prospect, we were fain to carry our wraps, and 
wished for a sun umbrella to screen us from the rays 
of the unclouded sun. This beautiful weather con- 
tinued into early December. 

The nearest ministerial neighbor of our order was a 
missionary to the Indians, not many miles distant. 
He was always a welcome visitor, whether accom- 
panied by one of the other missionaries at his station, 
by his little son, or by his dark-skinned proteges. 
One afternoon, about this time, he appeared at our 
door in his wagon, with a little Indian girl and two 
Indian youths. They were part of a company he was 
gathering to take to a training school, about two hun- 
dred miles distant, where they could have better 
advantages than his station afforded. He would like, 
he said, to leave the little girl with the pastor's wife, 
while he attended with the boys to gathering others 
in the immediate region. They would lodge at the 
hotel, and be ready for an early start in the morning. 
With an invitation to the missionary to return to the 
church for supper and breakfast, which was cordially 
accepted, the pastor's wife turned to the little girl. 
She was almost a wild Indian girl, but her friends 



120 Service in the King's Guards. 

had made her a fine outfit for school. She wore a 
red plaid dress, a little red shawl, hood and mittens, 
and good shoes and stockings. She carried a little 
bundle of clothes, and some moccasins were sticking 
out of one corner. When her friend the missionary 
had driven away, she felt forlorn, and laid her head 
clown on the arm of the easy-chair where she was 
seated, and quietly wept for a long time. Kind words 
and tones and gestures made no impression on her 
— all she wanted was to go back to her home, or, 
failing in that, to be left alone. When it was supper 
time she would not come to her place at table, but 
remained speechless, and with her face buried in her 
hands. Some doughnuts were placed on a plate in her 
lap, but she paid no heed. After a while one of the 
cakes disappeared when no one was looking, but her 
face was still hidden ; her forlorn and dejected little 
figure crouching down, just as it had been, in the big 
chair by the fire. While she remained with us she 
never spoke. When it was bedtime she rolled herself 
up in the wolf -skin robe, after taking off her shoes, 
and lay down on the carpet with her feet to the fire. 
In the morning she would not come to the breakfast 
table, but when all the rest were seated, and the bless- 
ing had been asked, she quietly left the room. We 
feared she had run away, but she soon reseated her- 
self by the fire and covered her eyes as before. She 



Thanksgiving. 121 

ate some breakfast which was placed on a plate before 
her, and an apple, although we did not know when. 
All this time she was silent, making no more response 
to kind attempts at acquaintanceship than a child 
carved from marble. We began to think she was not 
susceptible to kindness, but when an extra shawl was 
given her for the cold ride before her, with a large pin 
for fastening it, and she was asked if she would not 
come again, a kindly gleam passed over her dusky face, 
and she nodded assent as she was leaving the house. 

The sun was shining that morning as the missionary 
drove from our door, with his half dozen or more 
Indian pupils. The weather up to this time had been 
fine as Indian summer. Now light clouds were scud- 
ding across the sky, which began to assume a dim and 
frosty look. By mid-forenoon a blizzard was upon 
us. No rain had fallen for months and the sand-and- 
dust storm scratched the windowpanes till they 
seemed to have been furrowed by a thousand diamond 
points. Not alone on the outside was the discomfort 
of the fearful storm. The dust sifted through the 
five enormous windows to windward, and the great 
double doors, until every article of furniture, every 
book and paper, felt u gritty " to the touch ; and every 
crevice gave inlet to the rapidly increasing cold. Our 
stove was kept filled to its utmost capacity, but made 
small impression on the freezing atmosphere. All 



122 Service in the King's Guards. 

day the wife was obliged to sit with her feet at the 
oven's mouth, except as she removed them occasion- 
ally to unbend her stiffened fingers in the one warm 
place. The minister gave himself to replenishing fuel 
and fire almost constantly, and the mid-day meal con- 
sisted of a smoking cup of tea, and whatever available 
food we could find among our scanty stores. The 
church shook and trembled in the blast, but the ago- 
nizing apprehensions of our first blizzard in the frail 
cabin were not repeated. Partial and temporary 
damage to our shelter, not immediate annihilation, 
was the extent of our fear. This was of short dura- 
tion. The worst of the storm was over in about six 
hours, though the thermometer was low, and the fine 
snow was still flurrying through the air. The snow 
ceased, the wind abated to a light gale, but the cold 
continued to increase. The night proved almost as 
great a trial as the day, for the cold air blew over our 
heads, and it was hard to keep warm in bed, although 
the wolf -skin robe, with its warm linings, lay heavily 
over the other coverings. 

In that brief blizzard we had learned one lesson : 
that no cook-stove could keep our room warmed unless 
every crack was sealed. With a milder day came the 
carpenter at our summons to stop the space between 
the wall and the great round window sash, half the 
dimensions of which were below our ceiling and half 



Thanksgi oing. 123 

above. This saved a heavy upward loss of heat. By 
the aid of a step ladder, a dish of paste, and some 
strips of manilla paper, four of our five lofty windows 
were sealed all round the edges and across the middle 
division of the sash, and then boarded up, except a 
space equal to one ordinary window. Then the fold- 
ing doors into the main audience room, occupying 
nearly an entire side of our living room, were fitted 
with list — top, bottom, and sides — and the inner and 
outer entry doors were similarly treated. Now we 
had done all we could to prepare for winter, and 
turned our attention to parish work. 

No place we had seen since leaving Chicago had 
brought with it such a sense of intense energy and 
the bounding pulse of life as we instinctively felt here. 
The little congregation had of course a great variety 
in its composition, but its constant nucleus was a small 
company of ladies and gentlemen who would not have 
seemed out of place in any city audience. But they 
were largely unacquainted with each other and with 
the minister, each family bringing predilections for 
the order of things it had left, and no two with the 
same ideals. The actual present membership of the 
church was very small, and with some unusual disabil- 
ities as to harmony and growth, while society, even 
the best in the place,, — that which was slowly peopling 
the hillsides with cozy, comfortably furnished frontier 



124 Service in the King's Guards. 

homes, — was like so many grains of sand. The ele- 
ment of cohesiveness was yet to be introduced. 

Besides this better aspect of life there was another, 
which gathered in saloons and gambling dens along 
the main street, and lurked in evil houses along the 
majestic cotton wood-shaded avenue on the river bank, 
and which still manifested itself in flashes of disgrace 
when the law attempted its own vindication, and vio- 
lent deeds occasionally defied all punishment. Even 
now T one could scarcely pass along the business streets 
an} 7 day without meeting vagrant Indians of that 
worst type which characterizes the early contact of 
savage with so-called civilized life — in all the glory 
of blanket, paint, and feathers. A common spectacle 
was the cowboy, with broad sombrero, small arms, 
and yellow oilskin coat, booted and spurred, riding 
his pony in that long gallop of the plains, which 
seemed the natural gait of almost every horse in the 
country. Every second day, in sight from our hilltop, 
the " Deadwoocl coach" started out in the early morn- 
ing, after a long process of loading, to cross the wide 
Missouri, by ferry in summer, and on the ice in winter 
and in late autumn and early spring. The trembling 
passengers were often drenched in the freezing water 
by breaking through the ice, and had to pause for 
change of habiliments before proceeding over the 
gumbo hills and along the valley of Bad River, on the 



Thanksgiving, 125 

two-hundred-mile journey, which knew only briefest 
halt day or night until it was completed, in from forty 
to forty-eight hours. Once a week the bullion coach 
brought in from the same region its thousands of dol- 
lars' worth of gold and silver " bricks," the coach 
guarded within and without by messengers and guard 
armed to the teeth. From the nearest United States 
fort, in another direction, lumbered the long ambu- 
lances drawn by four or six "government mules," 
which were the pleasure carriages, in the time of peace, 
of officers and soldiers, whose blue uniforms and epau- 
lettes, tinsel, or stripes jostled against the barbaric 
blankets and feathers and strings of wampum of the 
Indians on the streets and in the stores. In a third 
direction, almost every day, dimly descried by the 
naked eye, but plainly discerned with the aid of a 
glass, wound a long procession of cattle, driven to 
their fate by freighters and cowboys over the hills, 
brown in winter, green in summer. 

Hundreds of young men had come hither to seek 
their fortune, and " grow up with the place." They 
slept in stores, offices, lofts, taking their meals at 
hotel, restaurant, or lunch counter, utterly homeless 
and friendless, all with energy, some with ability and 
character, most in that stage of life where a virtuous 
and friendly hand might help to save them from the 
ways of death, into which many were likely otherwise 



126 Service in the King's Guards. 

to drift. As in all new countries, men were largely in 
the majority. A dance held at an abandoned fort- 
near, not long previous to our arrival, had been 
attended by thirty-eight men and ten women. On all 
social occasions a young man who could secure the 
company of a young woman was looked upon as 
fortunate. Often the disparity of the sexes as to 
numbers was as high as ten to one. 

In such a state of society the highest and deepest 
need was the gospel. 

" Come out here," wrote the pastor to a brother 
minister at the east, of " liberal" tendencies, " and 
you will soon believe in a real devil." 

The absolute necessity of a real gospel of salvation 
from sin w\as never felt more forcibly. 

The Sunday morning and evening services at the 
little church attracted many, and constantly grew in 
interest. A small Methodist chapel in the "lower 
town" had a fair audience, and was much needed 
there. Other service as yet there was none. Our 
Sunday-school had forty members, with a banker for 
superintendent, and was growing. The little prayer 
meeting, before the first month had passed, was a 
real power for good. A meeting in the same place on 
Saturday evenings gathered the superintendent and 
teachers of the Sunday-school at the round table of 
the pastor, for study of the lesson, which was a 



Thanksgiving. 127 

felt necessity on the part of all. Thus three evenings 
of every week, including Sunday evening, when the 
lecture room was often transformed into a part of the 
audience room, were devoted to the religious uses of 
the church. 

But it was early felt that this was not enough. 
What could be done to reach those whom the religious 
services did not attract, and to whom no reasonable 
and elevating recreation was possible on this frontier, 
far beyond the range of concerts, singers, and lec- 
turers ? This was a problem which the daily sight of 
hundreds of men, and scores of women and children, 
whom as yet we could not win, emphasized contin- 
ually, and which confronted us in„ sleeping as well as 
in waking hours. 



CHAPTER XV. 



FOREFATHERS DAY. 



FOREFATHERS' day was approaching, and it 
was determined to see what could be done for 
profitable entertainment on that occasion. A simple 
celebration was planned, and the invitation to attend 
was given from the pulpit on the preceding Sunday. 
The evening saw a goodly audience, in the church, and 
all seemed to listen with interest to the exercises. 
Patriotic music and prayer were followed by an 
extempore address by the pastor, which in turn was 
followed by an essay on " Our Obligations to the 
Pilgrims," by one who was familiar with the historic 
scenes of Provincetown and Plymouth. It embodied 
a copy of the immortal compact in the cabin of the 
Mayflower, and, in closing, the audience was carried 
on a brief imaginary trip from under the canopy over 
Plymouth Rock, which guards the dust of those who 
there "sleep well," around Cole's Hill, up Leyden 
Street to Burial Hill, thence to the New Monument, 
and back by Pilgrim Hall, pausing there before the 
great pictures of the u Embarkation" and the " Land- 
ing " ; sitting in the seats of Brewster and of Carver, 

X28 



Forefathers' Day. 129 

and inspecting the household relics of the old heroes 
and heroines — spinning wheels, spectacles, wedding 
shoes, pewter platters, samplers, swords, letters, 
deeds, Psalm books, Bibles, clocks, cradles, and all. 
To make the object lesson complete, a map of Massa- 
chusetts Bay had been drawn on a sheet of printing 
paper, with Provincetown harbor, Barnstable and Ply- 
mouth bays, marked with a camel's hair brush and 
common ink. Also a genuine fragment of Plymouth 
Rock was passed from hand to hand in the audience, 
as the essayist read: — "On the coast, crowning a 
hill which overlooks Plymouth Bay, a statue has 
been reared in honor of the landing of the Pilgrim 
Fathers on these shores, or rather, of the ideas which 
their mission enshrined. Upon its lofty base stands 
the graceful figure of Faith, in womanly draperies, a 
finger pointing toward the stars, and her left hand 
holding an open Bible. At either corner of the mas- 
sive pedestal on which she stands are the statues of 
her handmaidens, — helpers in laying the foundations 
of a great civilization, — the figures of Education and 
Morality. Like the ancient Egyptian statue, which 
was fabled to sing whenever it was saluted by the 
rising sun, this towering marble, looking clown on 
Plymouth town and the graves of the fathers, gleam- 
ing on the eye of the sailor far beyond the harbor, 
chants to the children from sea to sea, and in the ear 



130 Service in the King's Guards. 

of all the human brotherhood, the story of our 
nation's birth. 

" The time for foundation-laying is not ended yet. 
We have our share to do. Is it as important and far- 
reaching as that of the fathers? Verily, who can 
tell?" 

The wild aborigines were scarcely nearer to the 
Pilgrims in the earliest days than they were to the 
little handful sitting on this winter night in a frontier 
church to live over again those days, and the story 
had almost the interest of a present reality, albeit 
the unique scene was more than two centuries and 
a half later in time, and the march of events had 
led from the wild shore of the Atlantic across two 
thousand miles of territory, as the frontier line had 
slowly followed the beckoning " star of empire" to 
the banks of the Missouri. 

"The stars heard" that night, if not "the sea," 
as all sang, in closing, " The Pilgrim Hymn," and 
we were commended in a closing prayer to the God 
of nations and of migrations. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

OUR LITERARY SOCIETY. 

THE patriotic occasion so much enjoyed encour- 
aged us in a scheme which was still undevel- 
oped. The counsel of three or four members of 
the church was sought as a kind of committee of 
ways and means on the social need. A gentleman 
who knew the place well responded enthusiastically 
to the suggestion of a literary society, and named 
two or three young men of education and intelligence 
who had expressed a wish for one. This was felt, 
by the pastor and his wife, to be the most desirable 
form of help in the circumstances, but a very difficult 
thing to attempt with the hope of making it strictly 
an adjunct to church work, and yet so attractive as 
to win the class who most needed it. 

Encouraged by some previous success in this line, 
and stimulated by the great need, we prepared for 
the attempt. Prayer for divine help and guidance 
was easy where a sense of human wisdom and help 
was so weak. A constitution was written out, 
guarded at every point as to the control of the under- 
taking, and yet with this fact not offensively promi- 

131 



132 Service in the King's Guards. 

nent, and with its machinery as simple as possible. 
About a dozen persons, of both sexes, were invited 
to a preliminary conference in the lecture room home, 
a majority being members of the church. The need 
of a literary society for mutual help and entertain- 
ment was conceded by all, and most of those present 
hoped it would be possible to organize and maintain 
one. In the midst of the full hearing of divergent 
views, the cover of the box by the stove broke under 
the combined weight of the water pail and a heavy 
young man seated on it, the former sending its con- 
tents over the latter, as well as into the kettles 
beneath, and deluging the floor. An embarrassment 
fatal to a meeting anywhere but on a frontier was 
the occasion of good-natured laughter, while all was 
made tidy and comfortable again, and then the meeting 
seemed ready for immediate action. 

The pastor now brought forth his constitution and 
read it. Some demur was made that the responsibility 
devolving on the executive committee (to prepare 
the program for every meeting, and assign the parts) 
was such that no one would be willing to serve on 
it ; others feared that it would not be possible to 
enroll a membership with the condition that each 
member should take a part in turn. But it was 
finally agreed to organize ; the constitution was 
adopted as an experiment, and officers elected. 



Our Literary Society. 133 

In view of the approach of the holidays, it was 
decided to defer beginning the work of the society 
until the first week in January. 

We had come to the week before Christmas, and 
the Sunday-school children must have a tree. This 
occasion elicited the hearty interest of the commu- 
nity, including saloonkeepers and others who never 
came to church, except on the occasion of a Sunday- 
school concert. The prophecy that " a little child 
shall lead them " found here its fulfillment. 

The pastor's daughter, left behind in school, had 
partially broken down in health, and it was deemed 
best that she should try the virtues of this dry 
climate. About this time she, a delicate girl of six- 
teen, made her advent to this new world in which her 
parents lived. By day she lived in the church with 
her father and mother. A kind neighbor, who hap- 
pened just then to have a spare chamber, generously 
offered it for her use by night. Her literary taste was 
now of much value when she could be persuaded to 
use it. 

The first meeting of the new society was held in 
one of the few parlors in the place, a dozen or more 
members being present. This first meeting was a 
curiosity. Each member to whom a part had been 
assigned — about six — had previously accepted the 
assignment, and all were now present. But when the 



134 Service in the King's Guards, 

time came for fulfillment, outside the pastor and his 
family, the courage of every heart failed — except in 
the case of those who had agreed to furnish the 
music. That was very good, several pieces being 
well rendered, showing that the town had consider- 
able musical talent. 

The pastor, his wife, and daughter had each taken 
a part, finding it necessary for this critical first 
occasion, in order to encourage the others. The 
pastor, a far " down-easter" by birth, gave a descrip- 
tion of a certain "clambake" as his contribution to 
the occasion, the wife contributed a brief essay, and 
the daughter recited Longfellow's 

i; I stood on the bridge at midnight.' • 

Despite the signal and unanticipated failures of the 
other literary members on the program, the evening 
seemed to be enjoyed. The question was raised as 
to whether we should attempt another meeting, but 
in the glow of cheer and social enjoyment it was 
said, " Please do not give it up; we never did any- 
thing of the sort before ; we are not used to this 
kind of thing, you see ; but try us again next week ; 
we will do our parts." So the executive committee 
met in a corner, parts were assigned and accepted, 
and, with cheerful good-nights, the company broke 
up about ten o'clock. 

The general plan was to take up the study of 



Our Literary Society. 135 

prominent American poets, and of American history 
of the Revolutionary period, the society being organ- 
ized in two corresponding sections. Most of the 
members of the society had " seen something of the 
world," and an exercise which should develop the 
talent for extemporaneous description or narration 
was devised, and added to the plan, under the name 
of a " conversation," for want of a better. The 
program of each occasion was further to be enlivened 
by a " humorous selection," and by the best music 
obtainable. Whittier was the first poet selected for 
study. A sketch of his life was assigned to one 
member for preparation, and a brief poem and a 
special selection were assigned to others, to be read 
or recited as preferred. The historical part was to 
consist of one or two brief essays on themes assigned 
for each meeting. The pastor, as president of the 
society, was ex officio a member of the executive 
committee of five, on whom devolved all the work 
of making the plans, which, in order to work suc- 
cessfully, could only be made after minute study of 
the literature and of the human nature to be brought 
together. This executive committee, consisting of 
three gentlemen , and two ladies, worked hard to 
make the undertaking a success, and a special bless- 
ing seemed to attend their labors. The term of office 
was for three months, and more than once during 



136 Service in the King's Guai'ds. 

that time did the committee gather round the tea table 
in the lecture room with the pastor and his family 
to discuss plans for work, and to adjust the parts of 
the members so that each should have a share which 
he could perform, and yet that every meeting should 
possess as high a degree of interest as possible. The 
second week, at another private house, a company of 
twenty was assembled, and the program was carried 
through without a break. The third week a still 
larger company came together, with accessions of 
new members as before, and it was now plain that 
no private house could accommodate the prospering 
society. It was voted to hold the next meeting in 
the audience room of the church. An initiation fee 
of twenty-five cents, fixed at the first, proved suffi- 
cient to pay for necessary records, and for lighting 
and warming the house. The attendance was still 
strictly confined to members, and from the beginning 
special pains had been taken to keep our new ven- 
ture from the notoriety generally accorded a new 
scheme by newspapers in a new country. 

The pastor now saw that the society was strong 
enough to survive a little more publicity, and thus to 
enlarge its usefulness in the community. He appealed 
to the benevolent feeling and public spirit of the mem- 
bers for the sake of those who could not or would not 
come into the society as working members. 



Our Literary Society. 137 

64 We have now had four meetings, " he said, ik and 
have successfully demonstrated our ability to have a 
meeting which shall be a means of pleasure and profit 
to ourselves. Another meeting falls in this Ions; 
month. Shall we not throw open our doors to every- 
body next week, inviting them to come in and share 
our treat with us, making up a program of selections 
from the work of the past month?" 

It was voted to do this, and also henceforth to make 
the last meeting of each mouth a public one. On the 
next occasion the church was full, and the people went 
away delighted. Its very novelty gave it an advan- 
tage in a community where, the winter previous, there 
had been a dance every night in the week. Dancing 
is the one recreation of people on the remote frontiers 
in the earliest years, but even that grows monotonous 
sometimes. 

An editor came to this public entertainment, and of 
course a glowing report was printed in the paper, 
with genuine pride in the literary ability evinced 
by the townspeople, but doubtless also with a pru- 
dent eye to the interests of real estate in the young- 
city, where real estate was the dominant interest, and 
where sometimes we had seen from thirty to sixty 
men leave their dinners cooling on their plates at the 
hotel table, while they rushed to a corner or an unoc- 
cupied table to gather round and discuss a plan of 



138 Service in the King's Guards, 

addition to the city plat, or a map of the town or 
county. After the first public entertainment, as two 
editors and reporters had become members of the 
club, two local journals gave the program of every 
meeting, private as well as public. Almost every 
social and denominational grade in the community 
soon had representatives in the membership ; staid 
heads of families, of middle age, with their boys and 
girls, lawyers, merchants, editors, real estate dealers, 
seamstresses, workingmen, clerks, Protestants of half 
a dozen varieties, and Roman Catholics — all met on 
a common basis, sixty working members taking the 
parts assigned them without demur, each one in turn 
making a real contribution to the enjoyment of the 
successive occasions, though of course in a variety of 
ways. 

Though the regular w r eekly meetings were still nomi- 
nally private, so great had been their success, and so 
genuine the interest felt by outsiders in the undertak- 
ing, that no one who presented himself at the door of 
the church on these occasions was ever turned away. 

The train which left Chicago in the morning for this 
part of the world arrived here at nightfall of the 
second day. It now constantly brought gentlemen 
from the east who had come to look over the country, 
often with a view to investments. Eeal estate dealers 
were always on the lookout for these new arrivals, and 



Out Literary Society. 139 

whenever they came on a "literary" evening, brought 
the visitors to these meetings as soon as they had 
partaken of supper and brushed the dust of travel 
from their garments. Often have we noted the pres- 
ence of from six to ten or twelve of these strangers 
modestly seated in the back seats on a single evening. 

Opportunity for making acquaintance was always 
given by a recess of fifteen or twenty minutes 
between the first and second parts of the program, 
when introductions were made, and older residents 
chatted with the strangers, or gathered in friendly 
groups of two, three, or four, for interchange of 
greetings, news, and conversation ; the miscellaneous 
membership mingling freely and without embarrass- 
ment, and finding its own affinities and social strati- 
fications no hindrance to genuine enjoyment on a 
common basis. After some months of experiment 
this was said by prominent members of the society to 
be the most valuable feature of the winter's work, 
replete as it had been with other benefits. 

The papers continued to do their full share of 
making known this work, as time went on. Long 
afterwards, the county superintendent of schools, 
who, with his wife, was a helper in every good work, 
said to us, in the church, "Do you know what de- 
cided me to move to this place ? It was the account 
of that literary societ} T in a paper mailed from here 
to New York, where I then lived." 



140 Service in the King's Guard?. 

Many of the regular attendants were young men, 
who seldom or never attended the religious meetings. 
So popular did the enterprise beeome that we feared 
it might grow unwieldy ; but it was never marred by 
the slightest lack of harmony. The onerous duties 
of the executive committee — consisting of two } 7 oung 
gentlemen and a lady, besides the pastor and his 
wife — were lightened by the generosity and trust 
which never questioned its decisions, and were always 
loyal to the selections of individuals for the public 
performances. This last was a duty, of course, ful- 
filled with great care by the committee, with a view 
to impartiality, and the affording of each member a 
share in the opportunity and profit to be reaped and 
enjoyed. As the number of members increased, 
it became necessary to increase the number of exer- 
cises on each program, in order to give all in turn 
a share of the work, and the time devoted to the 
meetings was extended a half hour — on special 
occasions even another hour ; but as a rule, no 
meetings were held beyond ten o'clock. The aver- 
age time allotted to each exercise was about ten 
minutes. Essays might have fifteen minutes if the 
writer desired ; poems and miscellaneous exercises 
often did not exceed five. 

The original plan was to have seven exercises each 
evening — three with the poets, two in history or 



Our Literary Society. 141 

biography, one miscellaneous or humorous selection, 
and one oral, which we called a " conversation." 

Whittier was the subject of study for the first 
month, Longfellow for the second, Bryant, Holmes, 
and Lowell for the third. 

The subjects assigned for essays in the historical 
section were : The Causes of the Revolutionary War ; 
The Early Life of Washington ; Washington as a 
General ; Campaigns in the North ; Burgoyne's Inva- 
sion ; Arnold and the Expedition to Quebec ; Lafay- 
ette ; Greene and Campaigns in the South ; Corn- 
wallis and Yorktown ; Benjamin Franklin. 

Maps and plans of campaigns were outlined on 
paper or portable blackboard. These topics, selected 
and assigned by the lady member of the executive 
committee who had charge of the historical section, 
were all prepared and presented, except one, six of 
them by busy men, who would have said in advance 
that both ability and time for such studies were 
wanting. Twenty-four poems were read or recited 
during the meetings of the first quarter, fifteen by 
ladies and nine by gentlemen. The miscellaneous 
selections and the " conversations " were entirely at 
the option, as to subject, of those to whom these 
parts were assigned, and contributed their full share 
to the enjoyment of the meetings. To many a great 
attraction was the music, which was in a variety of 



142 Service in the King's Guards. 

styles, both vocal and instrumental, but always good 
and high-toned. 

The library of the pastor found in this busy winter 
a justification for the heavy expense of bringing it 
to this remote frontier land. It contained Irving's 
Washington and a half dozen authors on United 
States history, several being school histories. The 
standard American poets were of course to be found 
in it, and some good helps toward the miscellaneous 
and humorous parts. These books were freely loaned 
to the constituency of the society, and were in con- 
stant requisition. A lending list was kept, in case 
of possible need, but no book was ever lost, or more 
than slightly soiled, even in conditions where the 
contrary had been expected. Bancroft's History and 
some other books, especially of poetry, were the 
property of other members ; but, as a rule, books 
were not abundant. Of course, as the lists and pro- 
grams show, no exhaustive work of minute scholar- 
ship and scholarly criticism was attempted. This 
would not have been desirable, even if it had been 
possible. General, rather than particular, aspects 
were sought, in the historical studies, as likely to 
be best, both for present interest and for abiding 
in the memory ; but this of course involved consider- 
able preliminary scanning of particulars. The same 
was true in regard to the study of the work of the 



Our Literary Society. 143 

poets. But it was felt that a real and substantial 
benefit was derived from marking out a particular 
portion of history for the writer's work, and in taking 
up the study of a few specified poets. 

Washington's birthday, it was duly decided in the 
councils of the society, should be celebrated by a 
special program, and an admission fee should con- 
tribute to the funds of the church. Rather against 
the fears of the executive committee, the popular 
vote expressed a preference to have the literary ex- 
ercises supplemented by historical tableaux, and a 
New England supper served by ladies dressed in the 
costume of the olden time. So much of an under- 
taking needed two evenings for its fulfillment, but, 
like all the other enterprises of the society, it evoked 
its full share of eclat. 

With limited means for such an undertaking, inge- 
nuity came to help, and the whole community offered 
freely its very best skill and material for the produc- 
ing of desired effects in the tableaux. In the colored 
lights shed on the various scenes, by an expert — a 
physician with chemicals and taste — the sombre 
scenes of Revolutionary history made a vivid im- 
pression on the beholders — one not easily forgotten 
by the children and young people nor by the " chil- 
dren of a larger growth." 

The second winter less concentrated work was tried, 



144 Service in the King's Guards, 

the responsibility of selections left largely with the 
individual members, and the general management 
thrown rather on "committee of the whole. " With 
the educating power and momentum of a season of 
successful work behind it, the society held on its way, 
although the circumstances of the community were 
considerably changed. A central point was the pres- 
entation of a series of essays on " Epochs in Ancient 
and Mediaeval History," around which clustered the 
other and miscellaneous features of each program. 
Perhaps as entertaining as the first season, on the 
whole, it was felt to be less profitable, owing to the 
miscellaneous character of most of the work. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

DIFFICULTIES. 

ALL this time the religious work of the church 
was uppermost. The Sunday congregations 
were increasing. Dozens of new chairs were added 
to the seating capacity of the church, and most were 
rilled when the weather was not too severe. New 
families were continually added to the parish, whose 
acquaintance must be made. Every variety and con- 
dition of life were found. Failing health had brought 
some to this dry climate, and invalids were constantly 
to be cheered in the trying conditions incident to a 
new country. To other families, well and hearty on 
their arrival, the frontier houses afforded so inhos- 
pitable accommodations that parents and children 
fell ill through exposure. Others, especially women, 
accustomed to eastern society, suffered intensely from 
homesickness — in some cases to the extent of shutting 
themselves up in their houses and spending much of 
their time in tears. To such of these as came oc- 
casionally to church, and to all his hearers, the pastor 
preached the luxury of doing good, of keeping 
" hearts at leisure from themselves " by attempting 

145 



146 Service in the King's Guards. 

to minister to those less favorably situated ; and told 
the people truly, that the happiest persons there were 
those who thought least about their own hardships 
and most about their needier neighbors. 

The time wore on, with constant promise and real- 
ization of good, and yet with such strands of diffi- 
culty braided into its work, that a constant sense 
of the need of wisdom from above pervaded every 
day and every task. To mold or guide the evolution 
of society in these hitherto untried circumstances, 
with the dissimilar, and sometimes threateningly 
inharmonious, elements at hand, and amid the mate- 
rialism which encased the minds and hearts of men, 
was a task impossible to merely human strength. 

But we went onward in our pilgrim way, endeavor- 
ing to " thank God for all that is past," and " trust 
him for all that 's to come." 

The physical inconveniences of living as we did 
were many. At every church social or other enter- 
tainment coffee, oysters, etc., must be cooked on 
the minister's stove, his study table beside it having 
been remanded to parts unknown ; the ham must be 
carved, and the sandwiches spread there, often with 
dire results to the much-enduring carpet, which bore 
the tramp of the large infant class in the Sunday- 
school, of the feet of that portion of the congre- 
gation which overflowed into the lecture room on 



Difficulties. 147 

Sunday evenings, and of friends whose meeting place 
it was on the week evenings devoted to prayer 
meetings, teachers' meetings, and literary societies. 
Under the added burdens of the omnipresent dust 
of this dusty and wind-blown climate, and the lack 
of a plentiful supply of water, body, heart, and 
brain grew weary. 

The cold was sometimes intense, although snow 
was not often deep enough and lasting enough to 
afford much sleighing. One winter morning, with 
an atmosphere still and beautiful as October and 
clear as June, we had found our bread, as usual 
at that season, frozen solid, and every article of 
metal clinging to our hands with a tenacity that 
threatened to take off the skin. As we hung our 
mercurial thermometer outside the church door, it 
rapidly descended to the bulb, and our means of regis- 
tering degrees of cold could no further go. By spirit 
thermometers elsewhere we learned that 43° below 
zero were registered. We did not feel chilled and 
penetrated by this cold as we should have done with 
the thermometer five degrees below zero on the 
Atlantic coast. But woe to any who ventured forth 
in this magnificent morning unfortified by a warm 
breakfast, and without being well wrapped ! Quickly 
freezing faces, ears, hands, and feet would have paid 
the penalty. 



148 Service in the King's Guards. 

Our daughter had the luxury of a separate sleeping 
room under the hospitable roof of a kind neighbor, 
and few rooms in the place were better. But with- 
out the smell of fire, and exposed as it was on the 
north and west, in spite of all we could do, the 
delicate girl suffered during those severe nights. 
When she was a little late in appearing at the break- 
fast table in the church, the mother sometimes found 
it hard to banish the apprehension that she had frozen 
in her bed, until her bright face came wreathed with 
its sunshiny good-morning smile, to speak for itself. 
The nights in the extemporized bedroom in the end 
of the lecture room were, for the most part, endurable, 
although by the time the stove, always filled at bed- 
time, had parted with its heat — usually about two 
o'clock in the morning — the cave of -ZEolus seemed 
to be located in our region, with its orifice over the 
head of the bed, or in the space over our gable 
window. Turn as one would, under the almost un- 
bearable weight of the coverings, it was hard to 
keep from growing stiff, and almost through the 
whole winter it seemed as if one's head ivould freeze, 
although it was carefully shrouded from the cold, 
with only an opening for breath. 

One terrific night we dared not attempt to occupy 
the " bedroom," but opened the double lounge beside 
the stove and spread the bed upon it, with the wolf- 



Difficulties. 149 

skin robe above the numerous coverings. The hus- 
band plied the fire at short intervals all night, and 
much of the time the stove was red-hot. But in the 
morning a cup of water at the head of the bed, about 
eight feet from the stove, was frozen solid. 

Sometimes a temporary illness, arising from the 
nervous strain of living so much in public, would 
alight upon the " weaker partner." Once there was 
compensation and help to recovery unlooked for. 
The literary society had met in the church as usual, 
the wife and mother being carefully shut away from 
sight in her bedroom corner, unable to rise from her 
couch, and suffering constant pain. The partition 
screen which made the " bedroom " was many feet 
lower than the ceiling of the lecture room, and it was 
not possible to shut the long line of folding doors 
so closely as to bar out the voices and sounds in the 
adjoining audience room. The time had come for 
the humorous selection, which always formed one 
number on the program. It was witty and wise at 
once, but not more so, perhaps, than on several 
previous occasions. But at this time an indefinable 
sympathy with the ludicrous side of life and thought 
seemed to give a thrill to l ' that electric chain where- 
with we all are darkly bound." These always well- 
behaved people, led by a dignified banker in the 
reader's chair, suddenly became oblivious to the 



150 Service in the King's Guards. 

sense of homelessness and loss, the anxieties and 
the hardships of this wild frontier life, and gave 
way, as one man, to uncontrollable laughter, not' 
rude and uproarious, but pervasive and irresistible 
to the last degree. The invalid upon her bed heard 
not the words which had occasioned this startling 
development, but, for the minutes during which the 
genius of mirth held every soul captive, laughed 
alone, amid her pain, for sympathy, until the tears 
of mirth rolled down her cheeks, and from that 
hour began to recover. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

THE PARSONAGE. 

IN these months of living in a church we had felt 
that we must make an effort to build a parsonage, 
but where the means was to come from was not yet 
evident, even to the eye of faith. In the little lecture 
room home we kneeled and asked God for help, daily, 
for weeks, before any word was spoken to a fellow- 
creature. Then, for the first time in our lives, we 
appealed for help toward an object with which our 
own welfare was connected. It was the work for this 
church which God had laid on our hearts in answer to 
our prayers. Tremblingly letters were sent out, to 
wealthy personal friends and acquaintances, chiefly in 
New England and New York, stating the need from 
various points of view, and intimating that contribu- 
tions of any amount, large or small, would be wel- 
come toward the building of a parsonage. It was 
proposed that contributions thus received should be 
held as a loan from the church and parsonage building 
society, to be repaid as rent in quarterly instalments, 
and to be used again and again as a fund to be loaned 
in the same way to other needy churches, going forth 
thus on a never-ending mission of mercy. 

151 



152 Service in the King's Guards, 

These letters were written, with prayer over every 
one. The general statement to be embodied was first 
read to a small meeting of the^ church, and received 
its endorsement. The promise of the enterprise, the 
need of the church and its pastor, and the impossi- 
bility of doing more, even with the hope of help from 
abroad, than to raise on the spot three hundred dollars 
with which to buy a parsonage site, was stated ; 
with some economic considerations affecting the 
Home Missionary Society, which kept the pastor in 
the field, and growing out of the conditions of life in 
this place. 

Money was in great demand among a people, many 
of whom had used their little all in removing to this 
new country and entering the quarter-sections of 
land, or buying the town lots whereon they hoped to 
make their homes. It was the exception if a man did 
not need to borrow money for building or improve- 
ment, team, seed, or tools. We once asked the rate 
of interest, in the first months of residence. The 
answer, by a young teacher who had brought a little 
money for investment, was, u One cannot get more 
than twenty-two per cent on good security. Chattel 
mortgages pay as high as thirty-two to forty per cent, 
but one has to look too closely after the chattels ! " 

Early in our engagement to occupy the field we 
were now in we had once hoped to secure a tiny 



TJie Parsonage. 153 

house of four small rooms, at a rental of two hundred 
dollars per year. In this hope we were disappointed. 
After we had learned more about the few rented 
houses in the place we found that it was frequently 
the case that from one third to one half the original 
cost of a house was expected for one year's rent, the 
business rule being one third. One small cabin, not 
far from the church, had cost three hundred dollars, 
and one hundred and fifty dollars yearly rent was paid 
for it. Some time afterwards, when these extreme 
conditions had been somewhat modified, an appeal 
was published in one of the papers for the formation 
of a building and loan association, in which the 
following illustration was used : — 

" The shares are two hundred dollars each and the 
dues are fifty cents a week on each share. A man 
wants to borrow and build a house costing, say, eight 
hundred dollars. To get the eight hundred dollars 
he must take five shares (one thousand dollars) ; esti- 
mating the premium paid to get the money at twenty 
per cent, which is a fair average (sometimes it is 
more and sometimes it is less), it will cost two dol- 
lars and a half a week and the interest on eight hun- 
dred dollars." 

The article then goes on to show that by borrowing 
one thousand dollars where he wants to use eight hun- 
dred, and paying for the use of it, in weekly dues, 



154 Service in the King's Guards. 

thirteen per cent per annum on one thousand dollars, 
in addition to twenty per cent per annum for the use 
of the eight hundred included in the one thousand, 
he will in five years pay fourteen hundred and fifty 
dollars for a house costing eight hundred dollars, and 
will by this means, at the moderate estimate of fifteen 
dollars for the monthly rent of the same house, which 
he would otherwise have been obliged to pay, have 
saved two hundred and fifty dollars ! 

Two considerations in the article, as printed in the 
paper, would mislead the investor in the proposed 
building and loan association. One was that money 
would be likely to command over twenty per cent 
interest in such an association more frequently than 
it would fall below it. The other was an error in 
figures not quoted, which by dropping, in multiplying, 
the fractional part of a dollar in the weekly dues, made 
a difference in favor of the association during its pro- 
posed lifetime — five years — of two hundred and 
eighty dollars. But we have given the corrected fig- 
ures, and letting the rate of interest stand as stated, 
there would be an actual gain of two hundred and 
fifty dollars accruing to the one who should build on 
this plan, over one who should pay the estimated rent 
for five years. 

In our letters to our good friends at the east we did 
not go into many statistics and figures, but made gen- 



The Parsonage. 155 

eral statements which would cover them all. Encour- 
aging and helpful responses came in almost every in- 
stance. Checks of ten, twenty-five, and fifty dollars 
were received, with kind words of interest and encour- 
agement. The little church went bravely to work to 
raise the three hundred dollars to pay for a valuable 
lot adjacent to the church, which was estimated by 
real estate dealers to be worth much more than the 
low price asked for it, in consideration of the use to 
which it was to be devoted. But we well knew that 
the cash must be paid for building as well as lot, and 
the aggregate of the small sums we hoarded so care- 
fully would scarcely lay the foundation. We had the 
promise of the secretary of the Congregational Union 
of three hundred dollars, "to pay last bills with"; 
but where was the money coming from to pay for the 
walls of the parsonage, even though the foundations, 
the roof, and the chimney were, sc- to speak, in sight? 
None will ever know — for it cannot be told — the joy 
which came to our burdened hearts one dismal March 
day in the lecture room, when we opened a letter which 
told us that a good sister in a New England state, 
blessed with a competence, had offered to give, for 
this parsonage, through the Union, the sum of ^ve 
hundred dollars! Tears of gratitude ki could ne'er 
repay " a debt so great. We knelt together and 
poured out our thanks to the Giver of all good, who 



156 Service in the King's Guards. 

had heard our petition and had moved his servants to 
come in this generous measure to our full relief. Then 
we addressed ourselves to the glad task of writing our 
thanks to this lady, to the secretary of the Union, and 
to sending the good news of certain success to each of 
the kind friends who had made smaller contributions 
toward our parsonage that was to be. 

As the spring came on, it was plain that release 
must be had for a time from these present conditions 
of life, or health, never very robust, would be hope- 
lessly broken. So the wife and mother, scarcely able 
to sit up, was taken to the train and bidden God- 
speed for the long journey eastward, leaving minister 
and daughter to keep together home and parish. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

IMMIGRATION. A JOURNEY IN THE OPPOSITE 

DIRECTION. FRONTIER LIFE. 

THOUGH the previous season had witnessed a 
large immigration, it was merely a prelude to 
that which was to come. A railroad official in the 
late summer had spoken with the minister about the 
evident indications as to a great coming inflow of 
population. " People will come here next year," he 
said, " as ducks to the pond" — a figure far more im- 
pressive to us than before we had lived in sight 
of the numberless multitudes of wild fowl in prairie 
sloughs. There was room enough and to spare. 
"You can put a plow in there," said another rail- 
road man, pointing from the car window to the 
unbroken prairie, " and plow a furrow straight north 
for two hundred miles without meeting a stick or 
stone, or any other obstacle." 

Fifteen hundred miles of railroad were built in a 
single year, and, with the way opened, the provi- 
dential time for settling this vast region had come. 
" Part of the time," it was said by one who knew 
the field well, the immigrants numbered " from three 

157 



158 Service in the King's Guards. 

thousand to five thousand per day. They came from 
New England and Old England, from Norway, Swe- 
den, Germany, Denmark, Bohemia, France, Ireland, 
Italy, Russia, China, Wales, and Scotland. " The 
land entries grew to " more than fifty million acres. 
At a single land office two hundred and eighty-five 
thousand acres were entered in a single day." Thirty 
million bushels of wheat were raised in one year 
in the territory. The public schools came to number 
two thousand. A thousand post offices, and two hun- 
dred newspapers, many of them springing up as if 
by magic, were numbered when the year was over. 

The journey of the missionary's wife was under- 
taken in late March of the season which saw the 
climax of this influx. The weather was cold, and 
snow filled all the interstices of the long, matted dry 
grass which covered the prairies, while, under a gray 
sky, the ever-blowing wind was sharp and uncomfort- 
able. The migrations of Goth and Van'dal and Hun, 
which descended on southern Europe and precipitated 
the fall of ancient Rome, were, separately, feeble in 
comparison with the great wave of immigration which 
had already begun to sweep over this region of the 
west. It was impossible to convey lumber to this 
timberless region in quantity equal to the need. The 
great trunk lines of railway stretching a thousand 
miles westward of Chicago were now literally block- 



Immigration . 159 

aded by the cattle and household goods of families 
moving westward, and all effort to supply them with 
lumber was for the time abandoned. It was piti- 
ful to see families with little children set down 
beside the railroad stations, in a raw, cold wind, amid 
the snow, on the vast, featureless prairies, absolutely 
unable to procure shelter of any kind except that 
which they could improvise. One of these temporary 
shelters was composed, on the windward side, of 
bales of prairie hay. A wagon box and some pack- 
ing boxes were disposed on the other sides, one gap 
being filled by the headboard of a bedstead. Over 
the whole was spread a rag carpet, forming a low 
flapping roof, with a hole in one corner sufficient to 
admit the funnel of a cook-stove which was set 
up underneath. Exposed to cold and to the horrors 
of fire in the high winds and amid this mass of 
inflammable material which any chance spark might 
kindle, this was the best of these extemporized 
shelters to be seen in a hundred miles of travel. A 
few had been able to procure lumber in the preceding 
winter or fall, and new shanties of buff-colored pine 
made up the general aspect of the towns at most of 
the stations, which were generally about fifteen or 
twenty miles apart, 

At the western end of the journey no sleeping car 
was to be had, but the crowds were going westward, 



160 Service in the King's Guards. 

not eastward, and so there was plenty of room in 
the day coaches. To the invalid — the only woman 
in the coach — the conductor was most kind, offering 
every facility for comfort in his power, and arranging 
two seats, — there were many unoccupied, — by a trans- 
formation of backs and cushions, so as to make a 
comfortable lounge by day or night. The precaution 
of bringing a lunch basket was well taken, as the time- 
tables of the railroads were in confusion, and R was 
not easy to obtain palatable food at the few stations 
where time was allowed for refreshments. Delays, 
even for hours, were constantly occurring. Fre- 
quently the train would be switched on to a side 
track at some lonely place where the sky and the 
vast stretches of earth were most monotonous, or 
with a few forlorn cabins in sight, which made the 
desolation more oppressive, and remain there from 
one to six hours, while the train dispatchers made 
desperate efforts to get the stalled west-bound trains 
dislodged and send them on their ponderous way. 
The train was twent3 7 -five hours late in Chicago, and 
the last few hours of the long journey brought an 
exhaustion w T hich was beginning to conquer the great- 
est will power possible to the lonely traveler. But 
loving attentions awaited her in the great city, where 
comfort, luxury, and elegance supplied her every 
want. Days and weeks of rest, with quiet compan- 



Immigration . 161 

ionship and gentle recreation, as it could be borne, 
rapidly restored the normal pulse, and gave the 
longing to be again at work. 

Meantime the intense life of the frontier parish 
was stimulated by the fresh currents of the great 
incoming multitude, and, as the spring wore on, the 
contrasts were deepened and heightened. Hope, 
always high, now sent its bounding pulsations to 
the very fingers' ends of dealers in real estate and 
town " boomers." To breathe the atmosphere of the 
place was to partake in some measure of the excite- 
ment. "The inhabitants of the country live an 
intense, exaggerated sort of existence," writes one 
who spent years among them, " and nothing tame 
attracts them." To lead men to think of eternal 
verities as the real things, as opposed to the transient 
and the seeming, which so bore them on its resistless 
current, was the task imposed upon the church of 
God. The providences and Spirit of God alone 
could make abiding impression. For a time the 
flood of worldliness seemed to bear all before it. 
But many a pathetic story, and more than one con- 
fession, came to the ears and heart of him who 
ministered in holy things, and opportunity for ex- 
tending sympathy and cheer was never greater. 

But a stone's throw from the church was the jail. 
Now it was the duty of the hour to pray beside the 



162 Service in the King's Guards. 

cot of the dying prisoner who sought God's mercy, 
and again, to hold, within these same prison walls, 
funeral services over the remains of a would-be mur- 
derer, shot dead in the streets in daylight by a city 
official in self-defense. 






CHAPTER XX. 



A FRONTIER CITY. 



OUR little church was set for the work of the largest 
Christian charity. So we were glad to have it 
used by those of other religious persuasions, so far as 
they had need. A Baptist missionary was to look after 
the sheep of his fold in our " city " on a given Sunday, 
and we were glad to offer them the use of our edifice, 
the pastor seizing the opportunity to preach "a free 
gospel " in a new town thirty miles away. 

This incipient town had started out with vigorous 
life. Anticipating the occasion, the minister had made 
a visit two weeks in advance, and engaged the dining 
room of the first hotel, now in process of construc- 
tion, for the expected service, making a public an- 
nouncement of time and place. The night before the 
appointed Sunday he is off on the train, several hours 
late, for the place of destination, where he arrives 
between nine and ten o'clock. The cold northeast 
wind is blowing, and the night is dark and damp. 
The hotel was expected to be in readiness for com- 
fortable occupancy by this time, but it is still unfin- 
ished, with neither windows nor doors. Inquiring in 

163 



164 Service in the King's Guards. 

the cold and darkness for lodgings, the minister is told 
there are none except in the attic of this unfinished 
building. To it he goes, and is led up the ladder to 
the loft by a boy with swinging lantern in hand, who 
welcomes him to the only hospitality the new town can 
afford. The attic is barely enclosed with damp, half- 
seasoned lumber. The cold wind is sweeping in 
through the open window spaces and doorways below, 
and through the openings above. On the floor of the 
attic are six or eight coarse mattresses, most of which 
have already received rest-seeking strangers. One 
had been reserved for the minister. Over it are 
spread two damp coverlids ; but neither sheet nor 
pillow appears. In anticipation of the "newness" 
which surrounds one on the frontier like an atmos- 
phere, thoughtful love at home had suggested the 
taking of the wolf -skin robe and a small lounge pillow, 
and these are now quickly unstrapped with the feel- 
ing that they are indeed for such a time as this. 
Rolling himself up in the well-lined robe, and placing 
the little pillow under his head, the preacher is soon 
at rest between the quilts. But the dampness of the 
room and of the wind is fearful, and sleep is diffi- 
cult. When the morning dawns the involuntary first 
thanksgiving is that pneumonia has not fastened 
itself upon him. 
Early meditations were on the subject of a place for 




41^8 



X 

i- 

z 
o 

> 

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i- 



A Frontier City. 165 

service. The dining room which had been engaged 
was open to the blasts, and a spring snowstorm was 
driving the snow through the open window and door 
spaces, until it lay here and there in growing drifts on 
the new-laid floor. Not long after breakfast a friend 
brought a courteous note from a young man, cordially 
offering the use of his real estate office for a preach- 
ing service in the afternoon. This offer was gladly 
accepted, for it was the best opportunity possible in 
the circumstances. The place was a small one-story 
building of rough lumber, its main room about twelve 
by fourteen feet in dimensions. It was furnished with 
a small coal-stove, an office desk, and one or two 
chairs. The meeting was announced for two o'clock, 
with the request that each one should pass on the 
notice to as many as possible. 

The hotel not being ready, a physician, whom we had 
formerly known, having located here, undertook to feed 
the hungry until they could be otherwise supplied, as he 
would doubtless have attended to his patients, if there 
had been any. He had extemporized a rough building 
about twelve by thirty feet on the ground and divided 
it into three rooms, a kitchen and dining room at one 
end, a sleeping room for himself at the other, and a 
general waiting room and reception room in the 
middle. This middle room, about twelve by fourteen 
feet, in the exigency for shelter that stormy Sunday 



166 Service in the King's Guards. 

forenoon, besides its furniture of a double bed, had a 
lounge, a table, a stove, a bureau, and some chairs. 
It furnished accommodations for about twelve or 
fifteen men, all spending the time as frontier life and 
morality dictate or permit. The preacher was among 
them, endeavoring to compose his thoughts for the 
preaching service which all were awaiting in the after- 
noon — the first ever held in the place. These men 
were daily fed by the great effort of the doctor's wife, 
who, thus endeavoring to supply a public need, was 
working beyond her strength, while they were looking 
up " claims " and " city lots." 

To the hospitality of this family the preacher had 
been welcomed, and he w r as grateful for it. But how 
to manifest the practical wisdom and the Christian 
manliness demanded by the place, the time, and his 
profession ; to satisfy his own conscience and yet not 
to repel prematurely those whom he sought to win to 
the message of the gospel, — seemed at first a difficult 
problem. But the forenoon wore away, on the whole 
not unpleasantly. 

When the hour for service in the little real 
estate office arrived, the room was packed with 
apparently earnest hearers, mostly young men. The 
preacher was sandwiched into a corner beside the 
desk, without room to move his feet. With Bible 
in one hand, and Gospel Hymn Book in the other, 



A Frontier City. 167 

he began the services. Two or three Gospel songs 
were sung. How these young men sung ! In the 
reading of the Word which followed, and in prayer, 
before the announcement of the text, there was a 
felt earnestness and intensity of devotion which was 
surest promise of cc free course " for the gospel mes- 
sage. To preach there and then was a privilege to 
which a lifetime affords few parallels. Every eye was 
fixed on the preacher, and every heart seemed hungry 
for the message. There was no cold formality in the 
request to " come again, " made by those who pressed 
toward the preacher with their thanks at the close of 
the service. 

About forty-five persons were present at this meet- 
ing. Inquiry revealed their origin as follows : one 
came from Nova Scotia, one from Massachusetts, 
four from New York, several from Indiana, from 
Illinois, and from Iowa, two from Missouri, two from 
Minnesota, one from Wisconsin, one from Kansas, 
and one from Wyoming Territory. 

In another respect, this was a characteristic fron- 
tier audience. There were present two women, four 
children, and thirty-eight men. 

A few weeks afterward, after preaching in his own 
pulpit, superintending a Sunday-school, and leading 
a Bible class, the preacher filled a second appointment 
at this place, being driven twenty-five miles over the 



168 Service in the King's Guards. 

intervening prairie by a friend, in time for a service 
held, as before, on Sunday afternoon. The place for 
the service on this occasion was a larger house, raised 
and enclosed since the previous visit. Within, the 
partitions between the several rooms were indicated 
only by the studding. A larger audience gathered 
here, eager and earnest as before. There were not 
seats enough to accommodate the people who packed 
the house, many standing in rooms adjoining that in 
which the preacher stood, and peering around the 
studding which intercepted their view. 

The first service in this town was held in March ; 
the second, in the middle of the spring. Before the 
next August was passed it was the minister's priv- 
ilege to preach iu the same place, in an " opera 
house " which was to seat a thousand people. Such 
is the growth of a frontier city. 



CHAPTER XXI. 

THE DAUGHTER. SITTING BULL. PREACHING AT 

THE FORT. 

rT^HE minister's daughter, now restored to health, 
-A- and being needed here, sought for the present 
to continue her studies, and at the same time to 
remain on the ground. A lady neighbor wished for 
her own pleasure to review her Latin, — so it was 
generously stated, — and the young student, with this 
accomplished teacher, read Cicero, and much in 
English also, giving the remainder of her time to 
such home-making in the church for her father as 
was possible in the circumstances, teaching the large 
infant class of the Sunday-school, and going to the 
sick or needy as opportunity offered, feeling that, 
though out of school for the most of the year, the 
time was not wasted. Recreation came with the 
church festivals, given at intervals through the spring 
and summer for the purchase of a bell, and in walks 
over the bluffs, although these were not very safe. 
Seven rattlesnakes had been killed the year before, 
within a stone's throw of the church, and mothers 
had feared to allow their little children to run about 

169 



170 Service in the King's Guards. 

freely. But this summer no rattlesnakes were heard 
of, though all were still watchful, and the young- 
girl usually had the companionship of children in her 
walks . 

One bright morning word came that a certain 
steamer had landed about a mile above the town. It 
was conveying Sitting Bull and his companions, who 
were being transferred by order of the government 
from a point up the river. The chief had held him a 
prisoner since his capture after the campaign in which 
General Custer lost his life. The minister and his 
daughter set out for a walk towards the upper landing, 
over the road which wound between the river and the 
bluffs, clothed in fresh green and sprinkled with wild 
flowers. As they approached the landing, the chief- 
tain, with his Indian escort, was coming toward the 
town, followed by a small crowd of white men and 
boys. The aspect of this famous Indian was not at- 
tractive. His form and movement indicated endurance, 
while his small eyes and wrinkled, leathern face gave 
no indication of thoughts which, perhaps even now 
crafty and resentful, were passing through his savage 
brain. His body-guard — if such his unarmed followers 
might be called — were fine specimens of young Indian 
manhood. They strode along with the dignity of 
Roman senators. Averaging six feet or more in their 
moccasins, there was a play of feature, a freedom of 



The Daughter. 171 

gesture, a grace of movement, a wild fearlessness of 
demeanor, which no captivity could quell, and which 
remains in memory as the greatest manifestation we 
have witnessed of the innate nobility of bearing which 
belongs to the true Indian prince. The boat was 
loaded with Indians who were accompanying the chief- 
tain. Some of these were refreshing themselves on 
the shore, the men lying apart on the grass, smoking, 
while the women were cooking the breakfast over little 
fires here and there. On the boat, filthy, littered, and 
disagreeable, other women were nursing and caring 
for the children who swarmed over its decks. The 
scene was disheartening and sickening enough, with 
its hopelessness for the future and its unwelcome 
recollections. 

Returning to the town, Sitting Bull was found, with 
his followers, holding a reception at the post office, 
whither many citizens had come, on hearing that the 
chief was there. He gravely shook hands with each 
one who was presented, uttering the sullen and 
guttural "How!" which is the invariable Indian sal- 
utation in English, and writing his rude autograph (at 
fifty cents apiece) for such as desired to possess it. 

The minister had some acquaintance with the chap- 
lain of the nearest garrison, who had proposed the 
courtesy of an exchange of pulpits. Now in the 
pleasant early summer this exchange was to be made. 



172 Service in the King's Guards. 

This involved a considerable journey over the prairie. 
Saturday morning, with horse and buggy, and accom- 
panied by his daughter, the minister started out. The 
first half of the way was familiar, and was made with 
success and comfort, in time for midday rest and 
dinner with our good friends at the Indian Mission. 
The remainder of the journey proved more uncertain. 
It was across an uninhabited prairie, its roads mere 
tracks in the wild grass, and crossing each other at 
every possible angle, and with neither sentinel, tree, 
nor guideboard to point the way. We had antici- 
pated no difficulty when we left the mission, but ere we 
had gone many miles uncertainties grew formidable. 
The wrong turn at an acute angle of the tracks soon 
took us far astray. The bewildered feeling of one 
driving hither and thither to find the way on a bound- 
less, treeless expanse is like that of a mariner in 
mid-ocean without chart or compass. And the bewil- 
derment is the more complete when, as then, the sun 
is hidden from sight. The only thing that could be 
done was to keep going, following best instincts and 
judgments, which in this instance proved not very 
helpful. 

After long wanderings, we knew not where, our 
track disappeared upon an abrupt gumbo bluff run- 
ning back from the river. How far we had come out 
of our way we could not tell, and the sun was getting 



The Daughter. 173 

low. The approach of night compelled a retreatfto 
the cheering hospitality of the mission. After a good 
night's rest, a good breakfast, and the greater cheer 
of the morning family worship, a young lady mission- 
ary mounted her Indian pony and accompanied the 
party, on the beautiful Sunday morning, three or four 
miles, until they were on a distinct trail in the right 
direction, and their perplexities were over. On they 
went, over the prairie, around the bluffs, through the 
ravines, along the bottom lands, up the bluff sides, 
along the terraced table-lands, until they reached the 
plateau on the edge of which stood the fort. They 
were at the chaplain's hospitable door just in time for 
morning service. This was their first visit to a well- 
appointed United States fort, and there were many 
things to be seen, heard, and observed. 

The day passed pleasantly. The morning audience 
was small ; that in the evening much larger. Attend- 
ance at divine service was at the option of the soldiers, 
and many chose to remain away. The red-tape of 
routine military life was manifest in many ways. The 
gentlemanly bearing of the officers was marked and 
pleasing. The Sunday morning and evening parade 
seemed needless, but such was the law. 

A call was much enjoyed in the afternoon from the 
surgeon of the post, a large-hearted and devoted 
Christian man. 



174 Service in the King's Guards. 

■ 

At night it was rather agreeable than otherwise to 

hear the cry of the sentinel, as his voice rang out the 

number of every hour and the cry of " All is well!" 

Monday morning, after witnessing the morning parade, 

father and daughter were soon on their way home, 

which they reached, without further mishap, at 

evening. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ASPECTS OF NATURE. — EXTREMES. A TORNADO. 

"TV /T~AJESTY is the attribute of many a landscape 
-L-Vj~ on the banks of the Missouri. The volume 
and width of the stream ; the great cotton wood trees 
fringing its shores ; the stretch of the river bottom ; 
the terraced rise of the bluffs which hem the valley, 
which is often miles in width; the vast expanse of 
upland, all overarched by the highest and fairest of 
skies, — combine to elevate and enlarge the soul's hori- 
zon. Every aspect of nature seems to be a part of 
the same grand diapason, a chord which includes all 
tones. 

The breaking up of the ice in the spring had been 
a time of great excitement. Once, in the short his- 
tory of the place, the river had loosened itself from the 
icy clasp of winter, far up at the mouth of the Yellow- 
stone, while still frozen over below, and the mighty 
current rolled death and destruction " for many a 
league onward," piling the shivered ice into gorges 
where some bend in the channel formed an obstruction 
to the current, as here, until the flood rose to the level 
of the "second bench, ,1 or terrace, filling the houses 

175 



176 Service in the King's Guards. 

and forcing the people to escape in boats to higher 
ground. Each spring brought recurring anxiety, and 
day and night we watched the softening ice, until, 
with a great, crackling roar, it broke. Some masses 
were piled high and then disappeared in the angry 
current ; some were thrown with terrific force out on 
the banks, and great floes filled the channel for days, 
during which no communication could be held with 
the opposite shore. 

The winter blizzards were not the only storms. 
Those of the summer sometimes surpassed them in 
sublimity. A gentleman who resided here, and who 
had traveled extensively in both hemispheres, told us 
that he had never found a place, except portions of 
Switzerland, where the thunder and lightning equaled 
what he had known in storms here. Amusing stories 
were told of the refuge sought in caves and cellars by 
business men in the early history of this place, and, 
in a state of society where daylight was an indispens- 
able ingredient of personal safety, of their fear of 
one another when hiding thus in the darkness and 
sublimity of a midnight storm. 

Some impressions of similar storms in our expe- 
rience are ineffaceable. One day in early summer the 
long hours wore on monotonously. Toward evening 
the heavens grew gray with clouds which curdled in 
their upper strata. Had we known more of these 



Aspects of Nature. Ill 

atmospheric phenomena, our anxieties would have 
been awakened. It was not long before the realities 
were quite as much as we could bear. The minister 
and his daughter were alone in the church home. 
The night grew pitchy dark. The lightnings flashed 
and the thunders rattled like the discharges of artil- 
lery and musketry combined. The winds blew and 
the floods descended. Gradually all these elements of 
sublimity were intensified until the tempest became 
frightful. The little church shook until the inmates 
felt as though in the clutches of some powerful 
demon. In fear" of a crash they barred the church 
doors. Then they knelt in prayer, and afterwards 
trustfully watched out the midnight with the storm, 
whose awfulness can never be forgotten. 

Extremes of temperature during the year were wide 
apart. In the winter we had hung our thermometer 
on the knob of the northwest church door to see the 
mercury descend into the bulb, stopping short of the 
" forty- three degrees below" marked by spirit ther- 
mometers elsewhere. In a succeeding winter the 
minister preached at a place where the thermometers 
marked fifty degrees below zero, and was told that the 
week before it had been at fifty-six below. 

Then there were the t4 Chinook winds," always hot 
in summer and in winter. We heard of sun heat at 
the Indian Mission station in a previous year which 



178 Service in the King's Guards. 

had liquefied chocolate in cakes, sending the dark- 
brown fluid in sluggish streams down from a high pan- 
tvy shelf, to the astonishment of the lady missionaries. 

On this first Sabbath of July the thermometer at 
the church stood for hours from one hundred and 
four degrees to one hundred and eight degrees Fahren- 
heit. In the coolest place in the church, on a door- 
post between audience room and lecture room, it 
marked one hundred and four degrees for several 
hours of the afternoon. The air was dry and hot, 
like the breath of a furnace. Breathing was not easy, 
nor did it bring much relief. In the following sum- 
mer we had the privilege of a near yet safe view of a 
tornado. 

The heat of the day seemed unendurable, with a 
strange oppressiveness in the air. Panting for breath, 
the minister was driven out of his study in hope of 
some relief. Bardly beyond the doorstep, his atten- 
tion was attracted by a peculiar noise. The heavens 
were nearly clear, but with a sultry dullness of the 
atmosphere, and one small cloud in the north, not far 
away. From that cloud hung a tubular column 
reminding one of the trunk of an elephant. It had 
a quivering, oscillating motion. Ever and anon it 
lengthened towards the earth, at times forming a 
juncture with a black cloud of dust and debris which 
rose up from the ground to meet it. Then it would 



Aspects of Nature. 179 

contract like a stretched cord of india rubber, when 
the extending pressure is relaxed. These two parts, 
the cloud of dust from the earth and the hanging 
tube-like cloud from above, moved on together. 
Whenever they united we could hear a roaring, crack- 
ling sound, as from a conflict of angry demons. At 
first the cloud seemed coming directly toward the 
town, but soon veered and passed around it. About 
a mile away, it struck the cow barn of a dairyman, 
and then the crackle and the roar were terrible. The 
barn was rent and shivered, and nothing, it was said, 
but splinters from it could ever be found afterwards. 
The tornado then moved on eastward, and when some 
two miles away it struck a small, frail house in which 
was a mother and her young child. The house was 
whirled into the air, and the mother and child landed 
in a cornfield not far away, neither killed, though the 
mother was somewhat injured. 

With a curiously fascinated gaze we watched the 
course of this strange phenomenon for about two 
hours. As it moved on, the cloud grew in size until, 
when miles away, we could see two, then three, of 
those angry-looking trunks hanging toward the earth. 
Twenty miles away a man with a two-horse team was 
taken up by it and dashed to destruction. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

OUR FOURTH OF JULY ON THE INDIAN RESERVATION. 

OUR Fourth of July was celebrated on the Indian 
reservation. Two young lawyers of the town 
chartered a steamboat and gave out an invitation to 
a sail on the river, with a celebration of the day 
near an Indian village on the Indian reservation three 
or four miles above on the opposite side. The min- 
ister and his friends were courteously invited to be 
a part of the company. Incited partly by the promise 
of novelty, they decided to go. 

When we steamed up the river there were four or 
five hundred people on board — a mixed company, 
such as might be expected of such a place, on such 
an occasion. It was " good, bad, and indifferent," 
bat all was orderly. The military band which 
accompanied us stirred our patriotism and gave good 
cheer by their martial music. 

Soon the boat " tied up" close to a small grove 
of wild trees which here lined the river's bank, and 
extended back fifteen or twenty rods to the edge of 
" the bottom," or intervale, on the opposite side of 
which, nestling close under the bluffs, was the Indian 

180 



Our Fourth of July on the Reservation. 181 

village, composed of tepees — lodges formed by 
setting up poles in the form of a hollow cone, and 
covering them with cloth, varied occasionally with 
a much-patched buffalo skin. 

Our patriotic celebration was held, immediately 
after landing, in the grove on the bank. The pro- 
gram was not long : — 

Music. 

Prayer by the Chaplain of the Day. 

Reading of the Declaration. 

More music. 

And yet it had a real interest, as the colors of a 

picture are brightened by a sombre background. 

These exercises over, we gave attention to the 
picnic dinner. The scene was picturesque enough, 
amidst the scraggy trees and the low underbrush on 
the banks of the " Big Muddy." The lands were 
those of the red men, whose representatives were 
near at hand, some of them, indeed f even now in 
our midst. Men, women, and children with fairer 
skin we gathered in little family and friendly groups, 
to partake of our luncheon, and to chat and laugh to 
our hearts' content. 

Dinner over, we marched out upon the open inter- 
vale, to meet the Indians who had come out from 
their tepees to extend friendly greetings. The scene 
was worthy of a painter's brush. Of our own race 



182 Service in the King's Guards. 

were all conditions of sex, age, character, learning > 
and estate. Of the other, there were the old 
and the haggard, bearing the distinctive marks of 
heathenism ; young men and maidens in all the 
glory of paint, feathers, and blankets, beads and 
tinsel ; and little children of all ages, from tiny and 
helpless infancy to stalwart youth. Between the 
white skin and the red skin lay the fifteen Christian 
centuries, from Constantine to Victoria, which have 
evolved the civilization of the Anglo-Saxon from 
the barbarism of our pagan ancestors. Across this 
gulf we reached out to one another friendly hands, 
without distrust. If the Indians seemed willing to 
learn of us, we were not unwilling to learn of them. 
Artlessness and not suspicion marked the intercourse 
of that long cloudless afternoon. Each seemed desir- 
ous of making the day pleasant to the other. The 
sports of the occasion were entered into by both races 
alike. 

In the later afternoon the Indians got out their 
ponies for a wild race over the prairie, to the delight 
of us all, as they had, with the same apparent enjoy- 
ment, witnessed the earlier foot races and other sports 
gotten up by the whites. 

Still later the Indians gave an exhibition of a 
war dance, around which the whites gathered and 
clapped and cheered quite lustily. Of one of their 



Our Fourth of July on the Reservation, 183 

diversions, however, we caught only a glimpse. As 
we had passed from the grove to the open plain at 
noon, we noticed an Indian leading a good-sized, well- 
favored dog. Some one remarked, " That is the dog 
they are going to roast " ; but no special attention was 
paid to the remark, and it was soon forgotten. 

Later in the day, along the borders of an upland 
which broke abruptly into a ravine, a large number of 
Indian women and children were gathered. The 
brightness and playfulness of these little ones had 
excited our interest. Gingersnaps offered for sale 
near by quickly filled our hands and pockets as we 
started on a pilgrimage among the children. No child 
was passed without its share. With simple pleasure 
we bestowed what they were delighted to receive. 
How their eyes brightened and sparkled, as they took 
the cakes in their little copper-colored hands ! The 
mothers were not unmindful of the attentions paid 
their children. They smiled and nodded the thanks 
they could not speak. As for ourselves, the only 
regret was to find our supply running low ; but each 
child received at least one ginger snap before we 
reached the outskirts of the group. 

At this point, our attention w r as drawn to smoke 
rising from a fire near by, which had, till now, been 
partially concealed by a group of squaws. We looked 
again. Over the fire they were roasting the dog we 



184 Service in the King's Guards. 

had seen led by the Indian when we first approached 
the encampment. A fire of sticks had been laid and 
kindled, and there was the dog, which lay upon the 
fire, hair on, and feet upwards, " natural as life." 
Several of the women were attending to the roasting. 
The friend who had accompanied us, a delicate lady 
of English antecedents, drew our attention to the 
scene, and our exclamations were " not loud, but deep," 
as we turned away. We had heard of such things 
before, but never thought to witness them. As we 
rejoined our white friends, it was too rare a bit of 
experience to keep. The secret u leaked out," to our 
regret, and soon the crowd which set that way was so 
great that the poor, embarrassed Indian women sus- 
pended operations. The dog was taken off the fire 
and reposed in hiding until the white people had left 
the grounds. The dog feast, a special luxury, was 
doubtless held before sunset, but at a later hour than 
had been intended. 

We left the reservation with interchange of civili- 
ties and mutual good wishes. No accident or mishap 
had marred the day, and the homeward sail on the 
broad river, over which stretched the long shadows of 
bluffs and trees from the western bank as the sun 
descended, 'was a time filled with quiet reflection sug- 
gested by the strange experience attendant upon our 
Fourth of July on an Indian reservation. In more 



Our Fourth of July on the Reservation. 185 

than one heart, we were sure, kindly sympathies had 
been not shriveled, but deepened and broadened by 
the day's close contact with savage life. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

OUTSIDE MISSIONARY WORK. 

T I THINGS were growing and enlarging on every 
-J- hand, and so there were multiplied occasions 
for help in Christian work. A little town, which is 
to grow into the county seat, was planted in an 
adjoining county. The minister was invited to come 
and help institute a religious service there, and as soon 
as he could find an opportunity, he was glad to go. 

The journey was over an almost unbroken prairie, 
lengthened by apprehensions of a gathering storm. A 
few settlers living in their first huts and shanties were 
scattered along the way. In one of these we took 
refuge when the fierce tempest had overtaken us, glad 
indeed of any shelter. And yet how like an egg- 
shell the frail tenement seemed while the fury of the 
storm was upon us ! When it had passed we were 
glad to find ourselves yet upon the earth. 

How welcome the hospitality which awaits a mis- 
sionary going out on such a service ! We were ' ' at 
home " the moment we alighted from our vehicle. 
The first question in such circumstances is, Where 
are we to hold service? Neither church, school- 

186 



Outside Missionary Work. 187 

house, nor hall was here. We did not feel altogether 
free from anxiety when told it was to be held in the 
unfinished office of the small hotel where we were 
domiciled, since there was neither chair, bench, nor 
seat of any description in the room. And as we had 
come over an almost uninhabited prairie to the town, 
which consisted of the small hotel, a store, a printing 
office, and a blacksmith's shop, we wondered if there 
would be any one to occupy seats if we had them, 
when the hour of service should arrive. But the time 
from Saturday night to Sunday morning was not long, 
and time would show. Breakfast over, the host made 
ready the rude room for the approaching service. 
Lumber was not plenty. Bits of blocks sawed off 
the ends of the timbers of the house frame, a few 
small boxes, and some nail kegs were brought into 
requisition, as the supports of a few short boards 
left over from the house. When all was arranged 
the rude little room had quite a comfortable look. 
Even a cabinet organ had appeared to grace the 
scene. 

In preparation for such a meeting there is danger 
that the preacher will underestimate the size or the 
quality of his expected audience. Perhaps rather, in 
the vagueness of that expectancy, in circumstances 
where no precedents have been established, vacancy is 
ready to settle down on heart and brain, paralyzing 



188 Service in the King's Guards. 

effort to arrange thought and press home motive. 
But nowhere less than on a frontier must one come 
before an audience without a message to the souls 
and hearts of men. The message was given this 
morning in answer to prayer. How surprised was 
the preacher, as he stepped into that office room at 
the hour appointed, to find it packed full, with as 
bright and cheery a company in appearance as he had 
ever found ! The people were mostly young and 
middle-aged. When the first hymn was announced 
the lady organist took her place and touched the 
keys — and what a burst of praise ! A chorus of 
good voices, in fine accord with each other and with 
the instrument, lifted up our spirits. Already the 
divine Presence was manifest. The best the preacher 
had to give was none too good for the audience assem- 
bled in this uncomely place. The people were from 
the towns and cities of the east. They had been 
trained in the schools and churches of the older 
states. They were earnest and enterprising, or they 
would not have been here to invite and to greet the 
Christian minister on the unbroken soil of a frontier 
settlement. The contrasts between the dull prospects 
of that Saturday's journey and the delights of the 
Sabbath service were greater than those between the 
storm and the sunshine which fell athwart that prairie 
trail. 



Outside Missionary Work. 189 

A few weeks later the minister was there again, to 
complete the organization of a church, which, as we 
trust, is to yield the fruits of righteousness through 
coming ages. 

In this missionary life one soon learns to take 
things as he finds them. He is often helpless before 
the difficulties which surround him. To grow dis- 
couraged is not Christlike. To become impatient 
is to fritter away what little power he has. To keep 
cheery is best and most becoming for all concerned. 

There are many unlooked-for tests of patience and 
trials of faith. A fact or two may be suggestive. 

His work calls him to a new and growing town 
on the railroad thirty miles away. He is to return 
by the evening train, which he finds is late. The 
best thing he can do is to wait where he is until the 
train comes. But the depot is simply an old freight 
car standing on a side track. One end of this car 
is used as a telegraph office ; the other end serves the 
double purpose of baggage car and waiting room. 
In this end, beside some pieces of baggage, there 
are already ten or fifteen men. Several are smoking, 
and two are " half seas over" and using obscene and 
profane language. At first the minister prefers to 
remain outside, but soon the night is dark and cold, 
and, for health's sake, he must enter the car. There 
amid the tobacco smoke and the bad language he 



190 Service in the King's Guards. 

waits until between one and two o'clock in the morn- 
ing, getting some new insight into human depravity 
and the needs of human nature. 

Again, he is sixty miles from home. He reaches 
the depot on time for the train homeward, due at 
six o'clock in the evening. The train is reported 
two hours late, and there is nothing better than 
remaining where he is. It is soon dark, with a brisk, 
cold north wind. The depot is the cc section house," 
one little room, where about a dozen men are huddled. 
There is not a chair in the room. Some are smoking. 
Here, in one corner, three men are sleeping on the 
dirty floor, In another, two men are stretched out 
on a wooden bench. Behind the stove is a boy curled 
up on the floor, alternately sleeping or waking, accord- 
ing to the degree of heat. It was an iron egg- 
shaped stove for soft coal. The tending of the fire 
was left to those in waiting for the train. One would 
fill the stove with coal and shut the door. Soon 
the little room, heated like a furnace, would become 
intolerable. Then some one would arouse himself 
and open the outer door of the room, as well as 
the door of the stove. With the ingress of wave 
after wave of cold air all were soon shivering. Then 
another would refill the stove and close the door, 
and soon they would be sweltering again. And so 
they alternated between melting heat and freezing 



Outside Missionary Work. 191 

cold for seven long hours instead of two. At one 
o'clock in the morning, at least one was thankful 
to escape by the coming of the train, endeavoring in 
thought to gain patience by regarding such trials as 
simply a part of the price of that Christian service 
by which the gospel of our Lord is given to the 
needy. 



CHAPTER XXV. 

RATION DAY AT AND NEAR THE AGENCY. 

rTlWICE a month the government gave out rations 
-*- to more than three thousand Indians at " the 
agency," thirty-five miles up the river. A party of 
six had planned a visit on one of these occasions, 
and on a beautiful midsummer morning we left our 
home as a part, of this company. The skies were 
clear, the air cool and bracing. Three miles out of 
town we found ourselves at the summit of the bluffs, 
where the eye takes in the whole circuit of the 
heavens. Westward is the valley of the Missouri, 
with the Indian reservation stretching beyond two 
hundred miles to the Black Hills. On the north, an 
" ocean of land," a vast, gentry undulating expanse 
of prairie reaching two hundred miles to the North- 
ern Pacific Railroad. A like treeless expanse stretches 
to the Mississippi five hundred miles eastward. On 
the south is the " Big Muddy," sweeping majestically 
between the bluffs on either side, a thousand miles of 
its course lying within the territory which we call our 
home. 
Yonder, on the bottom lands, is the Indian village, 

192 



Ration Day at and near the Agency. 193 

its huts and tepees in full sight in this air which lifts 
up and magnifies every object. 

The landscape, with all beyond which it suggests, 
forms a picture for the imagination to keep. But we 
cannot tarry long. Descending the bluffs by a road 
sometimes good, sometimes precipitous, we come to 
the home of our friends, who, as "foreign" mis- 
sionaries, have labored more than ten years among 
the Indians at this point. Here we are received with 
the cordiality characteristic of this household. We 
spend two delightful hours visiting the garden (was 
ever such luxuriant growth of vegetables and melons 
seen before ?) , meeting with the Indians for worship 
in their chapel, enjoying the Dakota hymns sung by 
one of the lady missionaries to her own accompani- 
ment, and examining the Dakota Bible and dictionary. 

But even here we must uot tarry long, and soon 
with farewells and a fervent " God bless you!" for 
these friends fitted by nature and culture for the 
highest station, and finding it with joy among these 
lowly Sioux, we are again on our way. 

We reach the fort, fifteen miles farther, about six 
o'clock. Pausing only for a friendly greeting with 
the chaplain and his family, we push onward eight 
or nine miles up the river, which we cross in a skiff, 
leaving our team and carrying our luggage on the 
other side, over the two-mile walk which intervenes 
between the landing and the agency. 






194 Service in the King's Guards. 

The " Indian agent " receives us kindly at his 
door, which we reach late in the evening, and we 
are hospitably entertained for the night. Early next 
morning all are astir, for it is " ration day." Indian 
men, women, children, and dogs of all sorts and sizes, 
are " here and there and everywhere." Many tepees 
and covered wagons are arranged in villages on the 
open plateaus beyond and above us. Here one may 
see an Indian sleeping on the ground, with nothing 
between him and the earth beneath or the sky above ; 
there, an Indian woman, nursing her child, sitting on 
the cold, damp ground. 

A group of painted savages is gathered about the 
door of the agency, waiting for the door to open, and 
scanning whatever in sight attracts their attention. 
A quarter of a mile away is the slaughterhouse, 
where one hundred and fifty fat cattle are slaugh- 
tered in a single day to furnish meat for the rations. 
About this place the scenes are too degraded and 
degrading for description. The poor dogs look on 
with quiet and modest mien, in comparison with the 
savage men and women, whose greed would seem 
more befitting to the dogs. 

We turn away to the office, where the corn, the 
coffee, the sugar, are given out. Each one of the mot- 
ley crowd is watching for his turn to enter and receive 
his allotted portion. There are old and wrinkled 



Ration Day at and near the Agency. 195 

faces, and faces of bright and beautiful children. 
There are young women, sitting in the dirt as uncon- 
cernedly as their white sisters would sit on sofas and 
easy-chairs in the drawing room. All that one has 
read in books or seen in pictures has here its original 
in the untamed Indian life before us. We ask our- 
selves involuntarily, u Is this a dream, or is it a 
terrible reality ?" 

We are here to learn. In the group about the door 
of the agency, composed mostly of men under middle 
age, there seems to be all the activity of a political 
caucus. There are speakers and there are listeners. 
We look on in involuntary admiration. These young 
Sioux, six feet in stature, straight as an arrow, clad 
in their peculiar costume, with heads bare and move- 
ments unimpeded, are engaged in animated conversa- 
tion. Their free gesticulation is worthy of a French 
orator ; their dignity and grace would become a royal 
prince. Their expressive countenances, so human, so 
manly, so different from what one might expect amid 
these environments, evoked the instinctive questions, 
" Where did they come from? " " Who can tell us of 
the unknown histories back of them?" 

Earlier in the day we had passed a small group of 
men evidently in earnest discussion over some inci- 
dent. One of them seemed, by his violent gesticula- 
tion, to be under great excitement. At the office of 



196 Service in the King's Guards. 

the agency we now learned its cause. This man had 
gone into the office for an interview with the agent, 
when he was rudely driven forth and disarmed. For 
what reason ? Because he was painted ! The agent, 
disliking the custom, had declared he would not do 
business with a painted Indian. And so, true to his 
prejudice, he had cast out the young brave from his 
presence because he was following this custom of his 
forefathers. White men might dye their whiskers and 
color their hair, but an Indian might not paint his 
brow and cheeks. The insulted Indian was, of course, 
offended. Our sympathies were with him. We could 
not believe it was any part of the duty of an official 
of our free government to refuse to do business with 
those to whom he had been sent, in trust, simply 
because their toilet was not to his taste. The case 
seemed suggestive. This was neither the first nor 
the last instance where the white man was the 
aggressor. 

A happy contrast with the depressing scenes at the 
agency was waiting for us a few miles distant. A 
Christian mission school for girls is three or four 
miles up the river, and we are glad to join our friends 
for a brief visit there. The refined lady in charge 
extended to us a most cordial welcome. We were 
shown over the mission house and were delighted 
at the sight of many convenient adjuncts to a civi- 



Ration Day at and near the Agency. 197 

lized and cultivated life. It was the time of the 
summer vacation, and the girls of the school were 
at home with their own families. But, in anticipation 
of company from the agency on this ration day, the 
lady principal had invited five of her pupils from 
homes near by to meet any strangers who might 
chance to visit them. They were now gathered in 
the large room used in term time for the teaching 
of needlework and other domestic arts. They were 
between twelve and twenty years of age. The 
quality of their dress was inexpensive, but it was 
neatness and comeliness itself. In winsome and lady- 
like appearance these Indian girls were fully the 
equals of the average schoolgirl of their years. 
Indeed, but for the color of their skin, they might 
easily have been taken for girls from the better 
homes of the American people. They replied to 
our questions modestly, and in good English. They 
entertained us with music, both vocal and instrumen- 
tal. They gave us some fine recitations of poetry 
— extracts from Longfellow's Hiawatha, and Christ- 
mas carols. The evidence of careful training worthily 
bestowed would have been a credit to any school. 
And these girls were of the same race as those we 
had left an hour before amid the wild scenes at the 
agency ! It was hard to believe it. And yet, such 
are the results of Christian homes and schools for 
the Indians. 



198 Service in the King's Guards. 

" Christian missions do pay ; they do pay," was our 
inmost thought, as we turned homeward. 

It was twelve o'clock at night when we reached 
our home. Never shall we forget the object lessons 
set before us in this visit to Indians on their own 
territory. 



CHAPTER XXVI. 

VISITORS AND A VISIT. 

A LTHOUGH our frontier life was isolated as 
regards the pleasant associations of other 
times and places, our present situation, a strate- 
gic point on the picket line of missions, brought 
occasional Christian greetings which were highly 
prized, and they have left pleasant pictures in the 
memory. Among our visitors in one summer were 
a professor from Beloit College, a student from Yale 
Theological Seminary, two young evangelists from 
Chicago, the editor of The New York Independent, 
a well-known pastor of a church in Boston, the 
western editor of The Congregationalist, a prominent 
pastor from Michigan, with a business man from his 
church, and others, including on one occasion ten or 
fifteen converted Indians. It was a sincere pleasure 
to welcome each and all of these to our humble home 
in the little church. 

In the young student from New Haven we found 
a rare geniality and genuineness of character, com- 
bined with such power of adaptation to special emer- 
gencies and unlooked-for conditions, as formed both 

199 



200 Service in the King's Guards. 

a pleasing example and a promise of greater things 
to come. He had come out at the close of his first 
year's study of theology to spend his summer vaca- 
tion in missionary work. Such an experience is 
always a test of character. Our Christian sympa- 
thies went out to meet him before we knew that he 
had reached his appointed post of duty. 

He arrived in the town of his labors on the 
Saturday evening train, to take up work which we 
had inaugurated by services already described. His 
first services were held in the dining room of that 
new first hotel, and here he remained over the Sab- 
bath. His first meeting of these strange conditions 
was brave, and the services had in them much 
promise. 

Anticipating his needs, we had wondered «how he 
would succeed in finding a suitable room for study. 
One can always find food in these frontier places, if 
he have money with which to pay for it. But a room 
in which a minister can make a sermon is indeed hard 
to find. As we were his nearest ministerial neighbors, 
only thirty miles away, he called and took counsel 
with us a few days after his arrival. Although he 
was a stranger, it was a real pleasure to meet him, 
both because of the personal interest he at once 
awakened and on account of the special interest we 
felt in the work he had undertaken. 



Visitors and a Visit. 201 

His need of a room, with no prospect of a supply, 
so far as we could see, was haunting us. Only a few 
words of greeting went before our propounding the 
question, " What are you going to do for a room?" 
Hope dawned upon us at once with his prompt reply, 
44 I am going to build a shack." With western dialect 
the young preacher had evidently already made ac- 
quaintance. Its application in this instance held out 
large promise. Such a structure the young student 
saw at once could be built for a small outlay, and be 
utilized for a parsonage while he should remain. In 
a few days he had put up his unique structure near 
the railway track on a site loaned him for the pur- 
pose, near the edge of the town. There he slept and 
wrote his sermons, and there he received his friends. 
More -than once it was our pleasure to call on him 
that summer. And if we were there with the hope 
of giving pleasant cheer, we were sure to receive 
more than we gave. As time and acquaintance pro- 
gressed, we came to feel assured that ihe young 
student, who showed such power of adaptation to 
new and trying circumstances, would find open doors 
of welcome and of usefulness whether his lot should 
be cast " far out upon the prairie" or in an elegant 
city church. 

He accomplished a good work during that vacation. 
It was my privilege to assist him in the organization 



202 Service in the King's Guards. 

of one church in his field, and he would have had 
another, but for the unworthy arts of sectarianism. 
The summer over, he prepared to return to his studies 
at New Haven, sincerely loved and regretted by the 
people whom he was compelled to leave. 

When all was ready for his departure we recalled 
the anxiety we had felt for him before his arrival, and 
our doubts about his ability to obtain shelter. 

u Mr. R ," we said, u what did your shack cost 

you?" 

" Twenty-seven dollars," was the prompt reply. 

" For how much have you sold it?" 

" Seventeen dollars." 

And so, by wise management, he had obtained a 
shelter, comfortable for the time and place, for his 
whole four months' vacation, at a cost of ten dollars. 

Our young friends, the evangelists from the Chicago 
Young Men's Christian Association, left also most 
pleasant recollections with their host. Soon after 
their arrival I united with them in a street service on 
the principal business street of our town at evening. 
They also held services in our little church, with good 
results. One of the young men was a lay preacher ; 
the other, a solo singer. The latter was a German, 
converted in boyhood at Mr. Moody's Sunday-school, 
and was, in his first work, giving promise of abundant 
usefulness. His Christian testimonies were given 



Visitors and a Visit. 203 

with great modesty and humility. His music had in 
it a wonderful vocal power and pathos. The captain 
of a steamboat on the Missouri, a rough, worldly man, 
carried him without charge on a two-hundred-mile 
trip, and afterward spoke of him as " a fine young 
fellow" whom he would be glad to have on his boat 
at any time for the good he would do. Often, since 
then, we are delighted to recall his sweet spirit, as we 
sing his own tune to the hymn, — 

44 Oh, wonderful words of the gospel ! 
Oh, wonderful message they bring, 
Proclaiming a blessed redemption, 
Through Jesus our Saviour and King! 

Believe, oh, believe in his mercy 
That flows like a fountain, so free, 

Believe, and receive the redemption 
He offers to you and to me." 

The visits of the older brethren were much enjoyed 
— how much, none can know who has not experienced 
the peculiar loneliness of spirit which frontier work 
involves. 

The occasion of the visit of our Michigan brethren, 
as of some of the others, was a particular desire to 
see something of the missionary work among the 
Indians. The Michigan pastor had chosen to devote 
his summer vacation to this object. With his friend, 
he called on us at the church, and expressed a desire 



204 Service in the King's Guards. 

that we should accompany him to a neighboring 
station. This invitation we gladly accepted, and 
promptly made the necessary arrangements for the 
journey. The good team from the livery seemed 
quite a surprise to the brethren, who, felt that they 
were on the utmost verge of civilization and could not 
expect its conveniences and comforts. Everything 
seemed so foreign to them that they scarcely looked 
for anything to which they had been accustomed. 

The heavens were smiling a glad welcome ; the 
earth was fragrant with flowers. Onward we went, 
over the bluffs, across the prairie, down the slopes 
of the gumbo hills, along the bottom lands of the 
river, until we reached the station. We knew that 
there a welcome awaited us, with care for our faithful 
horses also. 

These friends saw with delight the evidences of 
Christian labor within and without. Over the mound 
of the sacred enclosure close outside the study win- 
dow, and in the pictures on the wall within, linger 
the fragrance and the halo of a beautiful and sainted 
life here devoted to the lifting up of the lowest — an 
alabaster box of the costliest perfume here broken 
in love at the Saviour's feet. " Wheresoever this 
gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, 
this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for 
a memorial of her." 



Visitors and a Visit. 205 

Besides the beautiful home in this house of logs, 
with its flowers and its garden, and the chapel, with 
its memorial pulpit and communion table, and the 
many objects of interest connected with the mission- 
ary toil of years, there are the homes of those whom 
this toil has lifted up to heavenly places in Christ 
Jesus. On the right is the home of Yellow Hawk 
— a few years before a wild Indian chief, but now 
the pastor of this native church, revered and beloved. 
In the light of the change in his heart and in his 
home, we can read his appeal, translated as it was 
delivered, about this time, at a meeting of the Indian 
churches and their white friends at which we were 
present : — 

"We are glad to meet you, our friends, because 
you are our relatives. The word of ours we would 
have you deliver is that the Teeton branch of our 
nation is great, yet worshiping other gods ; and as 
we are unable to do the teaching, we look to you for 
assistance. When you go to your meeting tell them 
that we look to them for help and strength. Tell 
them that we desire to have our people know of the 
way of life through the death of the Son of God. 
Just as you desire this life for them, so tell our 
friends it is the desire of us — as many of us as 
believe. I have spoken." 

Yonder is the home of Deacon Spotted Bear, and 



206 Service in the King's Guards. 

yonder he is, harvesting his oats. His history and 
Christian experience cheer our hearts. On each of 
these brethren we call, to receive a greeting worthy 
of the apostolic age. 

The social pleasures of the evening in the mission- 
ary household, the comfort of the night, the cheer 
of the morning meal and worship past, we prepare 
to return. The team is at the door, and having said 
our adieus, we stand without awaiting the coming 
forth of our visiting brethren. 

Spotted Bear comes up to give us a morning greet- 
ing, and then, hearing the sound of music in the 
house, turns and enters. Soon we too are drawn 
by the harmony, so unexpected at this time. We 
reenter the sitting room, to find it indeed u a heav- 
enly place." At the piano sits a lady missionary, 
touching the keys with the skill of an artist. On 
either side of her stands an Indian woman, both 
singing from Gospel song books in the Dakota lan- 
guage. Surrounded by a group of Indian women and 
children sit our Michigan brethren in the middle of 
the room, and here at my right is Spotted Bear. All 
are absorbed in the hymn and the music. What a 
scene was that to our astonished vision ! As we came 
within its hallowed power the instinctive utterance of 
the heart was, " Out of every tongue and kindred 
and people ! " At the close of that hymn we were 



Visitors and a Visit. 207 

all ready for something more. A lady missionary 
present said, " Shall we not have prayer? " " Yes," 
was the instant response of the guests ; " and Brother 

will lead us." Three brief prayers were offered, 

two in English, one in the Dakota. Then our lay 
brother went about the room, leaving his thanks in a 
substantial form with each of the Indian children and 
their friends. 

Finally on our way, the unexpected is explained. 
A company of Christian Indian women, with their 
children, had been seen passing the house at the 
moment of the first farewells of the guests. They 
were called in and this precious scene followed. 

u That was like Peter's vision on the housetop!" 
said one of our friends. "That was nearer heaven 
than we ever were before ! " said the other. 

And the third gave thanks for this transfiguration 
of the Lord in the persons of his lowly brethren and 
sisters. 

It was not far from this time that a number of 
Christianized Indians reached our place, on their way 
to the annual meeting of the native churches. They 
had come a long distance, and night overtook them 
with the last twelve or fifteen miles of their journey 
unaccomplished. The minister at once invited them 
to share for the night his shelter in the church, 
and they modestly accepted it. They had robes and 



208 Service in the King's Guards. 

blankets with them, and cared for no bed better than 
the floor. The pulpit platform was carpeted, and the 
chair and pulpit were soon removed to make way for 
these dusky Christians. There were about a dozen or 
fifteen men, and all found room on the platform, 
sleeping there, side by side, the "sleep of the just"; 
while the minister, who happened to be without his 
family, slept well also, in his corner of the lecture 
room. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

A MEETING OF GENERAL ASSOCIATION. 

ONLY those who know what it is to live in the 
small, rude, and uncomfortable quarters which 
form the earl}' homes in a new country can appreciate 
the courage and self-denial of the housekeepers in a 
community which invites to its hospitality the mem- 
bers of an association of ministers and churches. 

To those who attend, also, there is always a sacri- 
fice of time and money — often one of physical com- 
fort, and sometimes of more than all these combined. 
I had, on one occasion, attended the meeting of a 
district, or local, association, which involved a jour- 
ney of three hundred miles to reach it, and no less in 
returning. At another, the fifteen dollars expended 
in a shorter journey to the General Association could 
ill be afforded from the salary adjusted to meet the 
most pressing needs, without any thought of allow- 
ance for expense of this kind. And yet I could not 
feel justified in remaining away from such meetings. 
They were an important part of the work we were 
here to do. If ever the fellowship of ministers and 
churches has a reason to be, surely it is in the condi- 

209 



210 Service in the King's Guards. 

tions which surround both in frontier work. The 
time at length came when the minister and his wife 
were for the first time to enjoy together the privilege 
of attending a meeting of Territorial Association. 

A storm of wind and sand was our first greeting, 
filling eyes and ears, and making locomotion some- 
times unsafe as well as uncomfortable. But its 
violence abated somewhat at sunset, and a hopeful, 
cheerful company came together in the evening for 
the opening service in the new church. 

Its pastor gave a hearty welcome. " Brethren and 
sisters," he said, " we are glad to see you. We can 
entertain you all, and would be glad to welcome twice 
as many." Then in a playful " aside " to the mem- 
bers of his own congregation, he added, " Brethren 
and sisters, I wish if there are any more places where 
friends can be entertained, you will be so kind as to 
let me know at once. The gathering from abroad is 
larger than I anticipated, and, in fact, we are a little 
short of places already." 

Additional hospitality was forthcoming, although 
that already proffered must have meant, in most cases, 
a surrender of the beds and pillows of the hosts, and 
the preparing and serving of meals in the most 
crowded and embarrassing circumstances. Some fam- 
ilies preferred to send their guests to the hotels. A 
good hotel, in the early years of settlement, is very 



A Meeting of General Association. 211 

rare, and the hotel guests at these meetings usually 
have and deserve the sympathy of the more fortunate 
ones received by the families. 

But we are all disposed of by this unwearied pastor 
and his generous people. A member of the editorial 
staff of a Boston paper gives thanks for the excel- 
lence of his accommodations (over a livery stable), 
and a missionary wife is grateful for a private room, 
though she hears the click of billiards and the voices 
of card players in the billiard room beneath her own 
from nightfall till daylight of Sunday morning. The 
young wife of a member of the "Yale Band" is 
domiciled, with her husband and child, in hotel 
quarters which do not invite description. 

It is a cheerful company which gathers at the first 
session. The sermon is followed by stirring speeches, 
until, in the joy of companionship and the sense of 
the boundless opportunity for service into which God 
is permitting us to enter, we forget everything less 
worthy of our thought. 

At nine o'clock the meeting closes, and we turn 
from our seats to greet a company of twelve, who 
have just arrived by the southern stage. A journey 
about equal in length to the distance between Boston 
and Albany has been accomplished by them in two 
days and an intervening sleepless night, with six 
changes of trains and two long stage rides. The one 



212 Service in the King's Guards. 

lady of this party is nearly exhausted, but in wind 
and darkness she must still walk nearly a mile to her 
place of entertainment. 

Reports from the churches next morning are no 
mere formality. Every one is eager to hear of his 
brother's joys or sorrows, his church prosperity or 
adversity. There is remarkable diversity in the theo- 
ries of the pastors in regard to the quantity of secu- 
lar cares and menial duties which may be made to 
minister to their growth in grace — remarkable una- 
nimity in their declarations that in these new fields the 
only way is for the minister to do everything. 

The best hour of the day is given to devotion, and 
a tender, helpful, uplifting hour it is. There are testi- 
monies and tears ; there is strong crying to God for 
a spiritual outpouring on all this moral wilderness. 
There is a communion season at the close of the 
Sunday morning service precious indeed, and not 
less so because of the sense of companionship in 
work and sympathy which comes like balm to the 
hearts of the missionaries who have toiled through 
the year, each in far-off isolation from his brother. 

U A home missionary experience meeting" is 
extemporized for Sunday afternoon. By the sug- 
gestion of the good secretary who presides the best 
time is given to the older brethren, whose lives have 
been spent in home missionary service here and in 



A Meeting of General Association. 213 

the younger states. It is not of achievement they 
speak ; they mourn imperfection, rather. It is not in 
themselves that their thoughts center, so much as in 
the good hand of God which has led them till they 
are here enabled to set up their Ebenezer. 

" I thank God for the friendship of Missionary 

Secretary ," said one. " These thirty years, and 

more, he has stood by me like a brother. How glad 
I shall be to meet him in heaven ! When my wife 
was dying of consumption, and I had to give up my 
little frontier parish, and remove her where she could 
have medical advice, I wrote to the secretary and 

told him so. ' When I arrive in the city of C ,' 

I wrote him, ' I shall be without a dollar.' The 
returning mail brought his sympathy and timely 
relief. I was thankful to be able to work. I hired 
out to drive team, at three dollars and a half a day ; 
for I could do this, and watch with my sick wife 
every night. I got an average of three hours' sleep 
in the twenty -four. So little, they said, killed Horace 
Greeley. It did n't hurt me a bit. The church near 
us proposed to make me a donation. I said, 4 1 beg 
of you, don't do it. I am able to work with these 
hands, and I am thankful to be able to earn every- 
thing we need.' I have been called in the providence 
of God to bury all my family but one. I have little 
to speak of as the result of my life work. I rejoice 



214 Service in the King's Guards. 

that God made my dear daughter, whom he took in 
her youth, the means of multiplied good. She called 
her young companions around her dying bed, and 
gave them her last messages. When they had gone, 
she said, c Father, I believe my death will be the 
means of more good than my continued life would 
be.' A few months after, in a revival, fifteen of 
those young people were converted, who ascribed the 
change to the death of my daughter. One of these 
is now a missionary in Japan, and I bless God that, 
through the life and death of my child, he is now 
sending the gospel message to multitudes in that 
land." 

Another brother reminded us that the disciples of 
old were sent out without two coats. " Thanks to 
the good sisters at the east," he said, " we have a 
better supply. 

" Years ago, when I was pastor of a missionary 
church of twenty-seven members, I had a box sent 
me containing five hundred old Sunday-school ques- 
tion books, on which I had five dollars' freight to pay. 
The times are better than they used to be. I had a 
missionary box last year in which, besides comforts 
for my family, was all the clothing which I have on 
— that is presentable" (Laughter.) 

The superintendent arose and said: "We don't 
know anything about missionary trials in these days. 



A Meeting of General Association. 215 

The work is comfortable now, compared with what it 
used to be. The eastern churches understand the 
needs better, communication is more easy and rapid, 
and the distinctive trials of home missionary life are 
largely in the past." 

The last year passed in swift review before the 
mental vision of a silent listener. There were places 
where the way had seemed almost too thorny and 
difficult to pass ; there were scars where the iron had 
entered the soul. The thought was, "Well, I don't 
know. What comes to us now is seemingly all we 
can bear, ' Ye shall not be tempted above that ye 
are able ' is blessedly verified to us now ; but the 
measure is often full. We cannot bear, it seems 
sometimes, a hairs breadth more. But relief always 
comes in at just that line. Was it less than this in 
the former times ? " 

A missionary rose on the opposite side of the room. 
The first home missionary in what is now a great and 
prosperous state, his life has been spent in the service 
which, more than age, has blanched his locks and bent 
his form, and planted a quiver in voice and hand. 
The sweetness of a benediction fell on the meeting 
with the sound of his voice. 

He said: "I have ever found the service a joy 
and the compensations abundant. And those mis- 
sionary boxes have always come laden with blessings. 



216 Service in the King's Guards. 

What we should have done without them I cannot 
think. I do not mourn that more has not been done 
for me. I have much occasion to fear that if the 
friends at the east only knew how poor my work has 
been, and how imperfection and sin have marred it 
all, they would feel dissatisfied with it and me." 

The quick tears sprang, and a hush of tenderness 
came over us all. There was a little space when 
words were not wanted. 

A cold rain storm had prevailed during the three 
days of the meeting. Seldom was a storm ever less 
thought of. The line of the old hymn, — 

u December's as pleasant as May," — 

came nearer to verification than some of us ever knew 
before. The altar fires of this missionary gathering 
were brightly burning, and they grew more radiant 
and warmth-giving to the last. Sunday evening came 
the farewell words — light good-bys and hearty 
anticipations for the work to which we were about 
to return, girded anew by the privileges here enjoyed. 
A member of the " Yale Band" had driven to this 
meeting, a hundred miles or more, in his own con- 
veyance, accompanied by his wife and little daughter, 
their only child, sixteen months of age. In health 
when they left home, and with delightful weather, 
the long journey had been a pleasant one. But in 



A Meeting of General Association. ill 

the narrow chamber at the hotel the little one 
sickened. In the stormy Saturday afternoon the 
mother took her, at the invitation of a neighboring 
pastor and former classmate, to his home, where, 
though many miles distant, the little one could be 
better cared for. She brightened, and played at 
evening with the children of the family. But in 
the night symptoms of fatal disease alarmed the 
mother and her friends. A telegram, u Baby is 
worse " reached the father as he sat with his brethren 
in the Sunday morning meeting in the church. No 
train could take him to his child until Monday morn- 
ing. Monday noon, when the train bringing the 
anxious father was in sight, the little one closed her 
eyes on earthly things ; and the missionary father 
and 'mother met, childless, in the parsonage of their 
kind friends, with all others about them strangers. 

Ere the day was past, others from the meeting 
came thither on their homeward way. Here we had 
to spend the night before we could resume our jour- 
ney. Expecting to find our way to a hotel, we were 
met at the station by the good pastor and some of 
his people, intent on hospitality. "Three gentlemen 
and a lady en route from the meeting,'' they were 
looking for, they said. 

Here was the venerable friend whose words had so 
touched our hearts in the ' ' missionary experience 



218 Service in the King's Guards. 

meeting." Here was a young English brother, come 
within the year from the mother country, to share 
the trials and the joys of a frontier pastorate. Here 
was Yellow Hawk, dumb in English, but eloquent in 
the language of Canaan, the faithful and beloved 
pastor of a native church which belonged to this 
association. The three were found, and assigned to 
the care of Christian friends. A carriage was in 
waiting for the missionary wife, whose escort to the 
meeting had been called by privilege and duty to 
take an opposite direction at its close. Her husband 
had requested her to take Yellow Hawk in charge for 
the long homeward journey, as the Christianized 
chieftain spoke no English. Rather timidly she had 
consented to this responsibility, only to find that 
the courtesy and good sense of her charge relieved 
her from all anxiety on his account, and that she 
was actually traveling as the one to be cared for by 
this chivalrous, dark-complexioned gentleman of the 
aboriginal name. 

The pastor, in waiting at the train, explained that 
the carriage would take the privileged guest, not to 
his own house, as he had expected, — that was the 
abode of sorrow now, — but to the care of a lady 
who, with her husband, would gladly welcome the 
wayfarer. Gratitude for such Christian kindness 
spoke from eyes rather than lips. An introduction, 



A Meeting of General Association. 219 

a glance at the transparent young countenance which 
welcomed us for Christ's sake, we knew, — although it 
was not said, — and we were at once at home. 

After a few moments, being left alone for a little, 
we bestowed a look on our surroundings. Books indi- 
cating intelligence, refinement, scholarship, on the 
part of their owners, were on the shelves. Here on 
the table was a portfolio of photographs — copies of 
famous pictures in the Dresden gallery. The Good 
Samaritan had ministered unto us in this far land, 
not in an inn, but in a cultured Christian home. In 
an hour hostess and guest were as old friends. Many 
acquaintances they had in common, and a sudden turn 
in the conversation disclosed the fact that their sisters 
had married cousins in an eastern city. But we must 
not linger on the unexpected friendship thus formed 
with this young wife and her husband, both college 
graduates, who, after a frontier training by a few 
years' residence in Montana, had been providentially 
brought here, to be a comfort and a help to this pastor 
and his church, a bulwark of strength to all good 
enterprises. 

Not for a moment had we forgotten that across the 
street our brother and sister mourned their dead. The 
train was to leave at nine o'clock in the morning, the 
pastor told us, and before this there would be a service 
of prayer at the parsonage, to which we were invited. 



220 Service in the King's Guards. 

In the little parlor, around the small coffin box, a 
missionary company we stood, while the chastened 

words of prayer from the lips of Father E 

upbore our spirits, and the sympathy of our Elder 
Brother distilled upon aching hearts. Then the little 
missionary procession, in four carriages, wended its 
way to the station, and busy villagers paused to 
inquire what it all meant. 

What a brave journey homeward was that which 
these bereaved parents were taking ! Serenely they 
talked of the little one and her last hours ; and then, 
though sudden tears would sometimes mount to the 
mother's eyes, they talked of the work they loved, on 
the altar of which, with no touch of conscious hero- 
ism, they were making a costly sacrifice. 

"Here," said the father, as we journeyed, u is the 
place where I spent the night alone on the open 
prairie. I was 'prospecting' missionary work while 
still a student in Yale Seminary. It was in summer 
vacation, three years ago. I came to this part of the 
country, got a pony, and set out to find the best 

places for missionary work. I left N after tea, 

on a hot summer day, thinking to ride northward 
along the river and to spend the night at a railway 
construction camp I expected to find not far above. 
But after hours of riding no camp appeared, and I 
diverged from the trail, not daring, however, to 



A Meeting of General Association. 221 

wander far. Failing to find any trace of humanity, I 
concluded I must spend the night alone. I tied my 
pony " — 

" To what?" 

"A knot of bunch grass, took my saddle for a 
pillow, and lay down on the bare ground, with my 
little saddlecloth for a covering and the stars for a 
canopy. I journeyed over the country that summer, 
took back to New Haven a good report, and the next 
spring seven of us formed the ' Yale Band,' to enter 
in and help possess the land." 

Leaving the stricken parents to each other for a 

time, we turn to Father E , to inquire about his 

family, his work, and the new college, of which he is 
a trustee. He is hopeful for his parish and for the 
college. We ask about the school privileges of his 
children. They are attending school, but reciting to 
him, he says, as their opportunities at school are not 
what their advancement demands. He wished to 
send two of them to the new college, — * not far, for 
this country, from the place where he resides, — but 
had been disappointed. The expense was more than 
he could meet. The boy might, perhaps, find a place 
where he could defray, by work, the chief expense, 
— that of board, — but a girl at work never knows 
when her time is her own. His daughter was not able 
to meet a double demand on her time and strength, 
and so they were both at home. 



222 Service in the King's Guards. 

This question of the education of their children — 
how many a home missionary family is still pondering 
it with, as yet, no solution ! 

At N we parted company, the bereaved father 

and mother to lay their baby's form in their own door- 
yard, in the shadow of the church on which the father 
had worked with his own hands all summer, and which 
will be dedicated in a few weeks, with added memories 
now, and sighings for 

"The tender grace of a day that is dead," 

when little feet tottered to meet him ; and the mother's 
heart must echo many a longing for the touch of a 
baby's "vanished hand" and the sound of a prattling 
u voice that is still." 

On, now, with Yellow Hawk alone, over scores and 
scores of miles, toward the setting sun and the majes- 
tic stream, beside which is our own dear church spire 
and the parsonage, toward the genesis and comple- 
tion of which the frontier work of almost two years 
has constantly beckoned. 

Pilgrims and strangers, as all our fathers were ! 
Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to 
come. 

Meantime, what comforts in the midst of trial, what 
hoverings of cloudy, fiery pillar, what 

"Blessings undeserved 
Mark all our erring track " ! 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

GETTING INTO THE PARSONAGE. 

TT was September when the minister's wife alone — 
-*- for her husband had been called away by the 
voice of his brethren at the association — prepared 
to move into the comely parsonage beside the church. 
It represented something dearer than even a home 
after long homelessuess ; it was an embodied answer 
to prayer and a loving mark of tender regard, fresh 
from the hand of Him who said to Nathanael, 
"When thou wast under the fig tree, I saw thee." 
The wife already knew that to her and hers it 
could be no more than a temporary home, for a 
greater need had appeared written on the horizon, 
which was to lead the minister, ere many months had 
passed, to give his whole time to the shepherding of 
the sheep scattered over these wide plains, and in 
the almost numberless new villages which had sprung 
up in consequence of the unprecedented immigration 
of the year. 

Still it was a joy to know that the church owned 
a parsonage, and that it would be ready for the 
next pastor. Meantime, for some months it must 

223 



224 Service in the King's Guards. 

be occupied by the present incumbent. The house 
was a good one for the far west. It had been 
bought complete for much less than the cost of con- 
struction, and removed to the parsonage lot from 
another lot which the rapid enlargement of the town 
made more valuable for business purposes than for 
residence. It stood, without foundations as yet, on 
the pleasant hillside, supported by a skeleton of 
timbers at a considerable distance from the ground, 
awaiting time for their enclosure into a cellar, and for 
the fitting up within needed to repair the damage of 
moving. A maid-of-all-work was secured for a few 
weeks, and just then an invalid acquaintance from the 
east, handy with tools, sought shelter at the parson- 
age, in return for which he made himself abundantly 
and generally useful, in fitting up the pastor's study 
with library shelves and making cupboards, closets, 
and steps. There were six rooms, besides a little 
pantry, a summer kitchen, and an unfinished attic. 
How like a palace it seemed, in modest white paint 
and green blinds and with its bay window ! There 
was an arch between parlor and sitting room which 
adapted it well to the afternoon prayer meetings, 
Bible class teas, and various little companies which 
imagination already pictured there. When curtains 
had been hung at the windows, simple carpets laid 
on the floors, books put up on the neatly stained 



Getting into the Parsonage. 225 

shelves lining two sides of the little study, pictures 
disposed on the walls, and our scanty furniture 
arranged to the best advantage, we experienced the 
deepest gratitude in noting the outcome of the trying 
contest with untoward circumstances which had been 
waged while we lived in the church, and felt that the 
unarticulated prayer of months for u three rooms to 
ourselves" had been abundantly answered, u above 
all that we had asked or thought." 

Our family washing, hitherto sent by stage up the 
river to be done by the Christian Indian women at 
the mission, in default of an adequate supply of 
washerwomen in the town, could now be done at 
home. Our table could now be spread in a quiet 
room adapted to its use and served three times a day 
from pantry, kitchen, and cellar. Oar family worship, 
retired from view, need not be subject to casual inter- 
ruptions by the many calls of strangers. The little 
study was the gem of the house, and two bedrooms 
gave the unspeakable relief of privacy so much 
needed in illness or extreme weariness, and of hav- 
ing the luxury of a room to offer to chance guests 
for the night. No elegance in the city homes of 
eastern friends, not even the pleasures of dear homes 
of our own in other days, had ever blessed our eyes 
like the vista which opened on them on the evening 
when we took our first meal in the new parsonage. 



226 Service in the King's Guards. 

On that evening the wife stood underneath the arch 
between parlor and sitting room, waiting to welcome 
the return of the husband after long absence ; she 
looked on one side through parlor and open door 
into the adjoining study, where an easy-chair stood 
beside the window and study table ; and on the other, 
through the open door of the sitting room to the table, 
where snowy linen and a few pieces of family china 
and silver were spread with shining welcome. That 
sight was a beatitude. 

It was only at intervals that there was a com- 
plete family life under the parsonage roof. The 
pressure of the outlying work was heavy beyond 
measure, and this exigency in the religious supply of 
new towns which had sprung up by the hundred, like 
fungi, almost literally in a night, with its accompany- 
ing opportunity for work which might tell on coming 
generations, would never come again. " My kingdom 
for an inch of time ! " cried England's greatest queen 
upon her deathbed. And time here and now was the 
golden hinge of the gates of opportunity. 

In the parish the work must still go on, with the 
help at hand and such supply of the pulpit as could be 
obtained, while the perishing fields beyond must not 
be neglected. So in two channels the family life and 
work must flow on, occasionally reuniting, until the 
Master should send more laborers into the harvest. 



Getting into the Parsonage, 227 

Painful incidents are more frequent in new settle- 
ments than in the older sections. Though these are 
not wanting in the oldest and best portions of any 
country, the more rigid stratification of society pre- 
vents their being felt to such an extent as in the more 
loose and chaotic conditions of beginnings. Sudden 
death where life was expected ; ruin of character where 
all seemed fair ; scenes of violence ; travesties of jus- 
tice ; unblushing vice stalking unclothed in public, — 
all oppress the spirit at times with a weight which 
is hard to bear. 

A murderer had been confined in the jail not far 
from the church for months. When the time came 
for trial, he, with a dozen other criminals, whites and 
Indians, chained together and guarded by armed men, 
went and came daily past our door to the place of trial. 
One afternoon we knew that the evidence was all in, 
demonstrating the guilt of this prisoner without a 
doubt, and that the jury had retired. Very early the 
next morning, the minister, preparing firewood beside 
the church, saw a soldier in a fresh uniform, with his 
gun on his shoulder, striding by at liberty, with head 
erect. It was the murderer, whom the jury had set 
free ! 

One night, while moving into the parsonage, the 
minister's wife, sleeping on an extemporized cot in 
an unfurnished room, was awakened by sounds more 



228 Service in the Kirig's Guards. 

terrible than those of approaching wild beasts. In 
the midnight the heart's blood seemed literally cur- 
dled as she listened to the groans and shrieks of a 
woman, the voice coming nearer, and pausing, as it 
happened, close to the house. Those anguished cries 
rent the air until listening suspense became agony. 
One arose within the parsonage and cautiously opened 
a door. Straining eyes discerned in the darkness 
the figure of a girl robed in white, in custody of 
officers of the law, who were taking her towards the 
jail. Beside the vehicle in which she was forcibly 
carried walked another female figure, also in night 
robes. To her the girl was piteously appealing in 
terror, " Oh, mother, save me, save me from that 
dark place ! " The terrible procession passed on, and 
the shrieks continued, growing fainter in the distance, 
until shut off from hearing by the closing doors of the 
prison house. 

An elderly widow came during this year to reside in 
our place. She had left friends and acquaintances of 
other days in the state where she had buried her 
husband and her memories of a good home, bringing 
with her to the pastor letters of commendation, show- 
ing the high respect in which she was held. She was 
one of the most spiritual-minded of the little flock, 
always, when health allowed, present at the prayer 
meetings, and always ready to contribute of her little 



Getting into the Parsonage. 229 

store toward the support of the gospel. She had 
come, with her only daughter, who had left a good 
husband at the east in business, won by that ignis 
fatuus which allured so many women to this new 
farming region, where each one who is, or can success- 
fully represent herself to be, the head of a family, 
as well as every single woman who has reached her 
majority, may file a claim on unoccupied land, build a 
" shack" on it, and, remaining there a few nights at 
intervals in the pleasant season of the year, establish 
at the end of six months a preemption title. With 
her affectionate and devoted daughter, the good 
mother feared no evil. It only troubled her that the 
daughter, a church member at the east, now did not 
come to church. A social call from leading ladies of 
the church, with an invitation to do so, was received 
politely by the middle-aged, ladylike woman ; but 
still she did not come. Time went on. One day, 
months afterwards, the mother called at the parson- 
age. Others were present, but the unconscious 
pathos of her face and attitude went to the heart of 
her hostess. Soon she came again, and asked to see 
the minister's wife alone. There, in agony, wringing 
her hands, and with the tears coursing down her 
wrinkled face, this gray -haired mother made known 
her fears that the daughter was fast nearing, if she 
had not already entered upon, a life of sin. Her 



230 Service in the King's Guards. 

mother's remonstrances had been unavailing. At first 
ridiculed, now she was treated with contempt and 
abuse, where always before filial affection and respect 
had smoothed her pathway. Infatuation had seized 
upon this loved and cherished daughter, the only com- 
fort of the mother's declining years. Doubtless the 
restraints of home and friends left far behind were 
loosened and temptation completed the outward ruin, 
begun long before in the heart. What could be said to 
comfort a mother in such agony? The pangs of life, 
the terrors of death, were naught in comparison with 
it. Together we kneeled at the bedside in our inmost 
room, and there poured out our souls in strong crying 
unto God for help. Again and again did this call for 
sympathy come, and sometimes the poor mother 
staggered under the weight of her sorrow, as she left 
the door of the parsonage. Outward help never 
came in those years, nor, to our knowledge, since. 
But " God is faithful," and gave in time the help 
needed by this sorrowing soul to bear that living 
crucifixion. 

At first alone, and then for a time with only an 
inexperienced girl for companion, the first weeks in 
the parsonage brought physical and mental strain, 
sometimes in ways at which we smile in the review, 
but which at the time were real trials of endurance 
and faith. The parsonage stood u on stilts," waiting 



Getting into the Parsonage. 231 

for workmen to put in the foundation when they could 
be had. A porch ran along the front side, its floor 
elevated about a foot above the ground, while the 
descending hillside left a clear elevation of six or 
eight feet in the rear. 

One night slumber was broken by strange, loud 
noises — heavy stamping as in our very ears, and 
trembling of the house. Bewilderment gave way to 
amusement when we were sufficiently awakened to 
collect our thoughts and reason out the situation. A 
small drove of horses, turned out to shift for them- 
selves, had been wandering in the vicinity for days. 
The night was cold, with a keen autumn wind sweep- 
ing over the bluffs. The horses had sought the 
protection of the unfenced parsonage, and taken 
possession of the porch ! 

An occasional howl of the coyote did not disturb 
us, especially if the discharge of a neighbor's gun of 
an evening told us that the wolf was seen and pur- 
sued. The animal was neither strong enough nor 
bold enough alone to do much damage within the 
precincts of our " city." It was evil in human shape 
that had most power to inspire fear. 

One night the wife lay down on her cot in the 
unfinished parsonage. With the husband absent, and 
the house strange, there was yet no thought of fear ; 
but thankfulness filled the heart for the roof over her 



232 Service in the King's Guards* 

head, and the prospect of a real sleeping room ere- 
long. Suddenly, in the deepest hour of the night, 
noises were heard, as of stealthy human footsteps and 
crafty movements, in the open spaces beneath the 
house. Like a wild beast descending on its prey, the 
fear which always crouches in ambush in a new coun- 
try fastened its fangs on the heart. A moment's 
paralysis was followed by tumultuous throbs and a 
choking of the throat. Then a calm fell on the spirit 
— not the calm which knew no danger, nor which 
imagined it had passed away ; but the calm which 
believed that God was her keeper, and that his hand 
would protect her, alike when menace was separated 
from her only by a thin floor, and when, without fear, 
the peaceful night enveloped her in quiet slumber. 
Absolutely superior to fear of every kind was that 
deliverance of the spirit ; the heart throbs were in- 
stantly stilled, and peaceful sleep followed at once, 
although ordinarily hours of wakefulness would have 
followed such alarm. The fact that clanger was there 
was not doubted ; the greater fact of being instantly 
sheltered, in the midst of tumultuous fear, under the 
safe shadow of the divine Presence, will ever be 
gratefully remembered. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

A VISIT. MISSIONARY BOXES. 

ON account of preoccupation, and separation by 
long distances, the privilege of a visit between 
the families of home missionaries is of rare occurrence. 
The first such opportunity occurred to us on the way to 
a meeting of an association and a church dedication. 
We planned for an extra day in going, in order to 

stop over at the village of T , to make the coveted 

visit and confer about a missionary organization. In 
the missionary meeting at the church zeal was all 
aglow when the host called for us. It was at sunset 
of a cold November day, and he drove us to his 
home across a mile or more of bleak moorland, behind 
frisky Indian ponies. This home had been won from 
virgin prairie within the past three years. We had 
heard of the hardships of this pastor and his family, 
and were hardly prepared to find a comfortable look- 
ing house on our arrival. We were glad to find a 
glowing coal-stove on our entrance to the family room. 
We were introduced to the grandmother, a lady stately 
under the weight of more than eighty-five years, and 

233 



234 Service in the King's Guards. 

bearing indications of a character which might fitly 
stand as a representative of the best which Massa- 
chusetts birth and Puritan training can show. A 
gentle face and voice are accompanied by a manner 
which might grace far different scenes, and by a 
thoughtfulness for others which is nature's highest 
patent of nobility. Her heart is not left behind in 
her native Berkshire hills, or in the well-known 
college town where she spent the years of her 
strength. She " likes the west well," and rejoices 
in the fact that she " cannot go anywhere that she 
does not seem to find friends." Dear heart ! as we 
look at that face, and listen to that voice, and catch 
the youthful enthusiasm which mingles with the mel- 
lowness of these utterances, we do not wonder that 
the friendships multiply faster than the years are 
added or the life scenes changed. 

The thermometer is sinking, and the wind is rising. 
Only the host and his brother missionary venture out 
over the mile of prairie to the evening meeting. The 
hostess and her remaining guest are glad to sit 
beside the fire. One by one, other members of the 
family retire, and we are left alone. What a sense 
of luxury comes over the tired traveler, in her rock- 
ing chair in the warm corner ! There is a rag carpet 
on the floor, which, in the lamplight, has a soft look 
of many hues in one. It was all knit % not woven, 



A Visit. — Missionary Boxes. 235 

b}' these slender, patient fingers, before looms and 
carpet weavers had arrived in this new land. On 
a stand in the corner, strewn with writing materials, 
is a tiny portable writing desk, in drab enamel, with 
a blue lining. It is the one thing fresh and new in 
the room, and bears a sense of comfort to the ob- 
server because it speaks of the possibility of one 
little investment beyond the barest necessities and 
most pressing wants of everyday life. Then we 
remember that its possessor has the gift which speaks 
sometimes in sweet rhyme and rhythm, and that she 
is corresponding secretary of a woman's temperance 
organization which has helped to save a county larger 
than a small state, as fair and fertile as the best in 
any land, from the curse of licensed rum. 

We talk at first of plans for the missionary organi- 
zation which the evening's cold and darkness had 
surprised unfinished. Then we go to the window 
and watch the lines of fire and the lurid smoke clouds 
from the burning prairie a mile or two away. In dark- 
ness and cold, a line of fire speeding along on the 
wings of the wind has a fearful look. u We are in no 
danger," says the hostess. " Our fire breaks are all 
plowed around the house and barn, except one knoll 
that was too stony, and the wind is not in the direction 
to sweep the fire through that." How slight seems 
the protection of a few furrows of plowed land, 



236 Service in the King's Guards. 

and the constancy of the inconstant wind ! But we 
know that a practised eye scans the horizon, and an 
accustomed ear listens to the direction of the wind, 
and we possess our souls in peace. 

u You have sometimes been in great danger from 
prairie fires ? " 

" Oh, yes ! Once Mr. C set a fire to burn over 

a little space around the house, and thus protect us 
from great fires by consuming the dried grass which 
might feed the flames, if left standing near the house. 
The wind was slight, and in a direction to take the 
little fire and smoke away from us. About my house- 
hold duties, I suddenly heard him cry out, and I knew 
there was trouble. The wind had changed, as in an 
instant, and was blowing strongly from the opposite 
direction. Then we had to struggle — for life per- 
haps, certainly for our shelter and all we had that could 
burn. Quicker than I can tell the tale, the roaring 
flames were sweeping toward the house. I carried 
water to him, as he fought the fire, until, even in the 
excitement, I felt my strength failing. He fought it 
three quarters of a mile, I carrying water to him all 
the while. Once I found him bent over, his conscious- 
ness seemingly gone, until I roused him. M , a 

girl of fifteen, fought it with a mop, wet at first, but 
after the water was gone, and the heat had made it 
dry, she used it as a weapon, and very effective it 



A Visit. — Missionary Boxes. 237 

was. When the mop was worn out she substituted her 
dress skirt, and fought with that until it also was worn 
and burned to shreds ; but the fire was conquered, and 
our home was saved." 

This pastor and his family were in their rudimentary 
house that memorable winter of unusual severity, when 
the first blizzard came in October, followed at frequent 
intervals by others, until the whole country was im- 
prisoned in snowdrifts and in chains of extreme cold. 
Scant supplies of food or fuel had been laid in, and 
the whole winter through many a family had kept one 
person constantly grinding wheat in the coffee mill in 
order to supply the " graham" meal, which was their 
only provision against starvation ; another had to be 
constantly at work procuring hay for fuel, which 
another had to twist and crowd without intermission 
into the stove. When the supply of hay grew short, 
because of the fearful storms and deep snows, then 
the shelter of the cattle had to be demolished and 
the scanty boards torn from floors and enclosures of 
houses to feed the hearth fires. 

We had heard of the sufferings of this family in 
that dreadful winter, but now learned some additional 
details. In answer to a question, the hostess said : 
"In that long winter we took refuge in books, when 
the intense cold permitted us to remain out of bed. 
Often we spent whole days in bed, for the sake of the 



238 Service in the King's Guards. 

greater warmth. When about the house we suffered 
from the cold, although wearing coats, caps, hoods, 
cloaks, mittens, and arctic overshoes. 

" One night I was reading aloud to my husband 
from Jean Ingelow. It was the story of the poor 
woman who listened to the sleet as it drove through 
the crevices of her uncomfortable dwelling, and fell 
upon the fire. I paused in the reading, and there was 
the same sound — the snow driven through the sides 
of our house, and falling with a hiss upon the stove." 

Reminiscences such as these were now suggested by 
the cold wind blowing more and more fiercely as the 
evening wore on ; but how changed this scene from 
that our hostess was describing ! The house was now 
a comfortable one of several rooms, not plastered, it 
was true, but finished inside with sheets of stout 
manilla paper. This was not uncomely, although it 
gave the mice a better opportunity than they were 
entitled to. Here were many comforts of life, though 
not its elegancies. In the guest chamber was a com- 
fortable bed, a bright new hemp carpet, an extem- 
porized washstand, a chair, and a square table in 
scarlet drapery, on which we set our lamp, and con- 
gratulated ourselves on such good quarters. The 
feeling which gave rise to this expression was rather 
one of gladness that these much-enduring missionaries 
had so comfortable a room to offer to their guests. 



A Visit, — Missionary Boxes, 239 

The ingenuity of construction in the scarlet table 
came in for second thought. It was a barrel draped 
with drugget, with an open box about a yard square 
and a foot in depth turned, bottom upward, over the 
barrel, and covered with red flannel and black fringe. 

No smell of fire came near that part of the house, 
and we were in the north chamber. The house trem- 
bled ir* the gusts which were still rising, and the room 
was so cold that we thought shiveringly of the bed. 
But blessings on the kind hands that had provided the 
blankets we found there ! They were warm and soft, 
and assured us the sleep that would have been impos- 
sible without them. In the morning a little drinking 
water which we had placed at the head of the bed, 
fortunately in a tin cup, was frozen solid, and ablu- 
tions in the temperature of the room were impossible. 

Though the cold was so severe, we gladly set our 
faces toward the further journey that day, for the 
church dedication was a privilege not to be neglected, 
even though the wind and the thermometer conspired 
against us. It was the dear church which was our 
first love, the foundations of which had been laid by 
the help of the minister's own hands. As we made 
ready, donning one layer of wraps after another, the 
hostess offered a long gray circular cloak, with a hood 
and pretty clasps. We had noted the graceful and 
becoming effect when she had worn it the day beforec 



240 Service in the King's Guards. 

Giving expression to our admiration of the warm and 
handsome garment, so suited to her figure, we learned 
that it had recently come to her in a missionary box 
from the east, and again we blessed the good women 
who, with strong faith and skillful hands, had been a 
means of such blessings to this household. 

A similar box had been sent to our own church 
home the year before. It had contained bed and 
table linen, which was to prove a perennial blessing, 
with clothing which was indeed welcome, including a 
new dress of soft gray serge, and a lovely shawl 
which will be a lifelong treasure, besides a suit for 
the minister and a multitude of little things which 
only a housekeeper can appreciate. Another present 
of books for the minister, from a city Sunday-school 
class, will be ever a memorial of gratitude to the 
young givers and of thankfulness to God. 

One barrel surprised us, alike by its arrival and 
its contents. There were two or three u shocking 
bad hats," rather worse, probably, in appearance 
when they arrived than when removed from attic or 
woodshed to the missionary package ; two cast-off 
bonnets just as they had been worn a long time 
before, and a quantity of secondhand clothing, which 
the minister gathered up in his arms and took, after 
dark, to the nearest washerwoman, a widow with a 
large family of children. We were grateful for any 



A Visit. — Missionary Boxes. 241 

kind intention of the donors, sorry that the money 
paid for freight had not been put to better use, and 
glad that we could find any one to whom we were not 
afraid to offer them. Good secondhand clothing can 
always be utilized in a missionary family, but that 
which merely lumbers an attic is better disposed of 
in some other way. The box which had come to the 
household we were visiting would have been ever 
remembered with thanksgiving if it had contained 
only those blessed blankets and that pretty cloak, but 
there were other things, smaller in cost, which equally 
filled vacant niches in the family economy ; and the 
box was like an oasis in a desert, to be remembered 
while life lasts as a precious relief in the pilgrim 
journey. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THANKSGIVING. — CHRISTMAS. — IMPROVEMENTS. 

IT was cheering to note manifestations of the Chris- 
tian spirit in the new circumstances which sur- 
rounded many a family. 

In one country neighborhood lived a family who had 
brought Christian character with them into the hard- 
ships of a life in strange contrast to the refinements 
and privileges of the suburban church they had left 
and the society in which they had moved. They were 
the leaders in Christian enterprise among their country 
neighbors. 

There were many homes in sight from their door 
where no Thanksgiving dinner would be prepared, 
and no voice of thankfulness arise. Thanksgiving 
services were appointed in the schoolhouse near their 
door, and all these neighbors invited to unite in Thanks- 
giving festivities in this Christian home. Larger 
than most pioneer homes, because of the large family 
domiciled there, it was still a " first" dwelling, not ele- 
gant, to say the least, in proportions or adornment. 
But its large-hearted, open-handed Christian hospitality 
became proverbial. The neighbors gathered to the 

242 



TJianksgiving. — Christmas. 243 

Thanksgiving dinner, some of them won to the pre- 
ceding service by this invitation ; others rejoiced 
to bear their part in Christian ministries with 
these beloved friends. Contributions to the feast 
came with every fresh arrival, but the table service, 
the general arrangements, the tea and coffee, and 
many another addition, were the joyful care of the 
mother and hostess, and a few volunteer helpers. The 
voice of petition and of song sanctified the feast, and 
another Christian milepost was set up in this new 
land. 

Seventy-five miles, " as the crow flies,'* from this 
scene — only a neighborly distance in a territory 
larger "than the combined areas of r Maine, New 
Hampshire, New Jersey, Vermont, Rhode Island, 
New York, Maryland, two Massachusetts, three Del- 
awares, three Connecticuts, and a half dozen Districts 
of Columbia, all united in one" — there was another 
Thanksgiving scene, in which the actors were also our 
friends and acquaintances. A husband, with his wife 
and family, had removed from a great city to their 
new abode, capacious beyond most, on lands over 
which buffaloes had but lately roamed by thousands. 
They became members and helpers in a village church 
but a few miles from their residence. Their hearts 
went out to the dwellers on the prairie around them, 
who did not go to church, and had no place for school 



244 Service* in the King's Guards. 

or worship within attracting distance. All summer 
their residence had been the gathering place of a 
Sunday-school, which had often numbered sixty mem- 
bers present. But they could not rest in this. With 
the coming of the winter, something more must be 
done. In their region crops had failed through 
drought. But as an inducement to the farmers to 
provide some place for a school and for Sabbath 
worship, a daughter of the family offered her services 
as teacher for three months without compensation. 
The young men of the neighborhood rallied and built 
the walls of a sod schoolhouse, large enough to ac- 
commodate both school and meeting for the winter. 
That was the easy part of the undertaking. The hard 
part was to find money to buy nails and boards for 
floor and roof\ But they drew up a subscription 
paper, and out of deep poverty raised sixty dollars 
for the purpose. So the building was completed with 
great joy, and the fair young schoolmistress duly 
installed. The school was overflowing. The parents 
hoped to make arrangements for occasional or regular 
preaching services on Sunday. When Thanksgiving 
arrived these had not been secured. Their hospitable 
home was consequently the only meeting place on 
Thanksgiving day. Of their village friends only the 
pastor and his wife were invited, but the country 
neighbors were all at the feast, wholly provided by 



Thanksgiving. — Christmas. 245 

host and hostess. Homesickness and the trials of a 
new country were forgotten in the cheer of that social 
board, where sixty were served. Religious and liter- 
ary exercises, impressive and interesting to all, took 
the place of the wished-for service in the house of 
God. The young people had their own special social 
in the evening, under the watchful, genial auspices 
which had made this Christian home a beacon toward 
which they had turned many a time before. 

In our own parish there was to be the usual church 
prayer meeting on Thursday evening. In a new coun- 
try family reunions, in the nature of the case, must 
be few. There is nothing, in most cases, to interfere 
with the profit of a devotional service on the evening 
of Thanksgiving day. There are some reasons why 
a conference meeting is likely to be better attended 
and more interesting than usual. 

We gathered in the lecture room of the church, a 
little company of some twenty believers, bound to- 
gether as by family ties. Some could number two or 
three Thanksgiving days spent in this country ; those 
who had been here longest could number four. In- 
stinctively, thanksgiving for mercies past was the 
theme of prayer and remark. The leader thanked 
God for health to work in this vineyard, for opportu- 
nity, and for abounding joy in the service. A lady 
spoke pf the great blessing her Sunday-school class 



246 Service in the King's Guards. 

had been to her during the past year, and of the help 
to her own spirit which had been brought in the effort 
to lead these girls aright. Another, who had recently 
come, a stranger in a strange land, gave thanks for 
the providence which had cast her lot within the influ- 
ence of this Christian church, and for the fellowship 
in work and sympathy she here had found. Another, 
a seamstress, expressed her gratitude for plenty of 
work and health to do it. To some of us this modest 
expression was touching, as we remembered the lovely 
spirit in which this dear friend had made profession of 
her faith since the year began, and taken the vows of 
God upon her, in the ordinances of his house. A 
young man, who had lived for several years on the 
frontier beyond the reach of Sabbath ministrations, 
and, as he testified, had lost his desire to go to church, 
was thankful for the mercies of a year which had seen 
him renew his Christian vows and, in company with 
his young wife, unite with the church, in which he was 
now an active and trusted member. A teacher in the 
public school gave expression to her gladness in the 
Christian friendships she here had formed, and in 
many other providential blessings. A member of 
another Christian fellowship expressed a sense of 
comfort in the knowledge of the work of this church, 
and of these Christian people, and in prayer gave 
utterance to the desires of a Christian heart in word 



Thanksgiving . — Christmas, 24:7 

and thought singularly earnest, felicitous, and com- 
prehensive. Another rendered thanks for happy home 
relations and continued health. One year before, this 
man, past middle age, from his youth a frontiersman, 
and in doubt as to his fitness for church membership, 
had made profession of his faith and been received 
into the church. Imperfect apprehension of theoreti- 
cal truth had cleared and crystallized into conviction 
before a humble self -estimate, and resolute and con- 
tinuous doing of duty, until his growth in spiritual 
things was apparent to the most casual observer. He 
did not thank God for this, but we did in silence while 
he spoke. A missionary wife gave thanks for the 
privilege of Christian service : " Who am I, that such 
blessing and joy should be vouchsafed me ? It is all 
of grace." 

It was the turn of one to speak who had been 
identified with this church enterprise from the begin- 
ning, when, amid gamblers and prostitutes and fron- 
tier recklessness of every kind, this gentle Christian 
man, who did not swear, and kept the Sabbath, to 
whom the money and valuables were brought in times 
of exigency and excitement for safe-keeping by the 
worst of men, who heard and kept the confidences 
which came to him, was the one among seventy who 
could be trusted, and against whom no slander or 
distrust ever lifted its voice. He had been reading 



248 Service in the King's Guards. 

lately of the early Christians and martyrs, of worship 
in catacombs and caves and hidden nooks, and his 
heart was full of thanksgiving for the privilege of 
Christian worship, with none to molest or make afraid. 
Some present remembered how this man had been the 
forlorn hope of a church enterprise in this place ; how, 
on a Sabbath morning in the early days here, he would 
himself lug the chairs (and pulpit box, when there 
was any) from one new building to another, in search 
of a room where he might be allowed to arrange them 
and call the people together for the public worship of 
God. He had made the fires, lighted the lamps, kept 
the supplies of fuel and oil from failing, moved from 
one place to another, until fourteen buildings, many 
of them intended for saloons when they were com- 
pleted, were successively occupied in advance for 
divine service. Year in and year out his fidelity 
was like a light in a dark place, and without him this 
church, which now is established and strengthened, 
would not have been. Only the patience of mother 
love parallels his faithfulness ; only the self-abnega- 
tion of mother love can illustrate his self-forgetfulness. 
In this comely sanctuary he forgets the toils and dis- 
couragements of the past ; in this improved and 
improving community, with its Christian churches, " as 
a city set on a hill," he gives thanks for its mercies, 
and seems to remember no more the vice and hea- 
thenism it is displacing. 



Thanksgiving. — Christmas. 249 

Multitudes go clowu to *death amid the besetting 
temptations of frontier life. But how potent are 
good influences here set in motion, and how rich and 
strong the Christian life may grow which enters into 
its opportunities for service in 4i the kingdom and 
patience of Jesus Christ " ! 

It is hard to close the meeting within the hour. As 
Christian joy overflows, metes and bounds are less 
defined than usual, and when we rise for the last song 
and benediction it is much past the usual time for 
closing. With a glow and cheer unknown for many 
a day, we separate. This meeting was only remark- 
able because the blessing of God was with it. Its 
incidents might be paralleled on many a frontier field. 
Doubtless many a story might be told of thanksgiv- 
ings more notable and incidents more stirring. 

Thanksgiving over, we began to look forward with 
the Sunday-school to Christmas. With the training 
which the literary society had given old and young, 
it was much easier than before to prepare a brief aud 
excellent program for the Christmas exercises. We 
wished this year to beautify the interior of the church, 
whose bare white walls constantly invited decoration, 
and began in good season. Evening after evening a 
committee of young people met in the parsonage to 
prepare mottoes on a plan there made. Distant city 
friends had sent, at our request, alphabet patterns for 



250 Service in the King's Guards. 

letters in beautiful "old English" text, and a quan- 
tity of crimson velvet paper. Thoroughly well made 
were the letters for the Scripture texts, appropriate for 
the walls of our sanctuary, cut by aching fingers with 
the patterns laid on pasteboard, and then carefully 
covered by pasting on this foundation the crimson 
letters cut by the same patterns. When all were 
finished and tacked on the wall, with pins shortened 
by pincers in a way not to mar the plastering, the 
effect was beautiful, one said, " as any frescoing in 
a city church." Wreaths of evergreen for the win- 
dows, trimming for cornices and pillars, and a hand- 
some tree, procured by a special excursion organized 
for the purpose, completed our arrangements. A 
Christmas box had been sent to our Sunday-school by 
the children of a suburban school far eastward, who 
had contributed playthings, books, skates, and the 
unnumbered things which children like. These were 
carefully assorted by a committee of ladies at the 
parsonage, and some of them laid aside for poor 
children of the town who, as yet, had not been won 
to Sunday-school. Enough were left to hang some- 
thing on the tree for every child who belonged to the 
school. 

The occasion was one of less hilarious gladness 
than the first Christmas tree, but one of far higher 
real enjoyment. 



Thanksgiving. — Christmas. 251 

Whenever anything was planned to interest the 
children, every soul in the parish, old and young, was 
interested. Men who never came to church on other 
occasions were always in the crowd which filled to 
overflowing audience room, lecture room, and vesti- 
bule, at the Sunday-school concerts, which were given 
usually once in two or three months, not as an u exhi- 
bition " of the children, but with Scripture exercises 
and music in which all the members of the school had 
part. The Easter concert had been specially impress- 
ive and attractive. All these exercises of the year 
had prepared the way for the accumulated interest of 
the Christmastide. When all was over our church 
decorations in Scripture on the walls were perma- 
nent adornments, grateful to sight for a whole year 
afterward. 

This improvement of the sanctuary was not the 
only one. By various efforts put forth throughout 
the preceding year, a fine-toned church bell, wholly 
paid for by the society, had been hung in the belfry, 
which had previously echoed only to the winds. Now 
its cheerful summons was sent out for every service, 
far and wide, up and down that river valley, and 
across those plains. It was the first, and for a time 
the only, church bell in a great region, except one at 
the Indian Mission. 

One improvement which the year had seen was 



252 Service in the King's Guards. 

wholly unexpected. A kind lady in an eastern city, 
having friends in this church, had felt her sympathy 
roused when she heard that the edifice was without 
a carpet. A lack we had never mourned was soon 
supplied by this generous lady and her friends, in the 
gift of a roll of carpet in warm crimson, sufficient to 
cover pulpit platform, audience room, and lecture 
room. This was a genuine surprise. When it was 
made and in its place none would have believed that 
the atmosphere of the whole house would seem to 
have been so changed. We seemed no longer on 
a rude frontier, but in a comely house of God. A 
permanent cover for the carpet was made to protect 
it during the rainy season ; but what a change in the 
requisitions made at the door for mat and scraper 
by the incoming congregations ! Now the slowly 
accumulating funds of the "Aid Society " of the 
women were seen to have been well destined for 
pulpit chairs and a communion table, which, ere the 
year closed, completed the beautiful transformation. 
The parsonage witnessed some pleasant scenes. 
One church social must be held there, of course, as 
soon as it was in order, as a kind of dedication. 
Then there were gatherings of the young people, by 
Sunday-school classes, that no one might be over- 
looked, with light refreshments, chat, music, pictures, 
and simple games. The teachers' meetings were 



Thanksgiving. — Christmas. 253 

transferred to the pleasant parlor, while the circle 
was not too large to gather round the table and the 
study lamp. And the women's prayer meetings 
found here, in the short winter afternoons, new 
interest and cheer. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

A FUNERAL ON THE INDIAN RESERVATION. 

ANSWERING the call of the parsonage door- 
bell one morning, we found a man inquiring 
for the preacher. A little child had died, four miles 
out on " the reservation," and the funeral was to be 
held in the afternoon. The request for the services 
of the minister was of course met by a promise to be 
there. It was necessary to cross the river, partly on 
the ice, partly in a rowboat, and a guide was to meet 
us on the other side. At the appointed time minister 
and guide met on the farther shore — the guide a 
civil young man, an uncle of the deceased child. He 
was at the river landing for the double purpose of 
procuring the little coffin and meeting the minister. 
Seated in the wagon, we were soon off. Our way 
was up over the bluffs of the Missouri to the table- 
land, and then down another series of bluffs to a 
point in the valley of a tributary which rejoiced in 
the name of Bad River. To one but little accus- 
tomed to travel in the Indian country it would not 
have been difficult to believe that the distance was 

254 



A Funeral on the Indian Reservation. 255 

double that which had been named. Yet the very 
wildness and strangeness of the scenes lent them a 
peculiar interest, and the way was shortened even 
while it lengthened. 

Erelong we reached the plateau from whence we 
could see down to the river bottom where we were 
going. Two rude log houses near each other were 
pointed out by the guide as the place of destination. 
There were neither cultivated fields nor gardens to 
be seen. Only the wild buffalo grass, a few small 
trees along the river's edge, and the barren gumbo 
bluffs beyond completed the dreary landscape, in 
the monotonous light of a dull winter day. Arriving 
at the house of mourning, the minister was kindly 
met by sorrowing friends, father, mother, maternal 
grandfather and grandmother, uncles, aunts, and 
one little brother of the child who had been taken 
from them. An aunt, a bright and promising young- 
lady, was a member of our little church, and we had 
often met her in our social and religious meetings. 
Through this acquaintanceship came the call to attend 
the funeral. The grandfather was an American, the 
grandmother a half-breed Sioux. 

Following the lead of the grandfather, we entered 
the rude home into which death had entered before 
us. There was no carpet on the floor, nor was there 
a chair in the house. In one end of the only room 



256 Service in the King's Guards. 

it contained was an old cooking stove ; in the other 
was a bed on which the sick mother was lying. The 
bedstead had never seen a cabinet shop ; it was 
made of a few pieces of rough board nailed together. 

But the minister had already learned not to be 
embarrassed by such surroundings. The absence of 
chairs was taken as a matter of course. Seizing the 
nearest thing at hand, an empty soap box, he seated 
himself by the stove to warm. 

The arrival had evidently quickened preparation 
both within and around the house. Soon the little 
form was neatly robed and laid in the casket. A few 
boards were brought in and laid on other boxes to 
furnish seats for the friends who were to be present. 
There was a thoughtful propriety in these prepara- 
tions that won our respect and excited our sympathy. 
The hushed voices, the quiet footsteps, the reverent 
passing out and in, were worthy of more cultivated 
surroundings. 

Twelve or fifteen persons were present at the 
service. One was an Indian, a fine-looking, well- 
behaved young man in citizen's clothes. Several 
others had Indian blood in their veins. When all 
was in readiness the minister left his seat behind 
the stove, to make known with a sympathizing heart 
the offered gifts of the gospel, so suited to the needs 
of these anxious, aching human hearts. There was 
none to help in the singing, but gladly he sang, — 



A Funeral on the Indian Reservation. 257 

" There's a land that is fairer than day, 
And by faith we can see it afar," 

and read the precious words : — 

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in 
trouble. . . . The Lord of hosts is with us; the God of 
Jacob is our refuge. . . . 

"Let not your heart be troubled. ... In my Father's 
house are many mansions : if it were not so, I would have 
told you. I go to prepare a place for you." 

The reading was followed by a message God gave 
for this occasion. Then it was easier to pray than 
not to pray. As the blessing of our Lord on these 
sorrowing hearts was asked there were audible sighs 
and suppressed sobs from the little company. 

When the prayer was ended there were no dry eyes 
in the room. Heaven seemed near. Rarely had a 
funeral service ever seemed more blessed and up- 
lifting. Never had the privileges of this missionary 
" at the front" seemed more unspeakable. Never 
had he felt more truly how adapted to the wants of 
suffering humanity in every condition is the " glori- 
ous gospel of the blessed God." As thus fitted to 
the wants of these suffering hearts, it was demon- 
strably God's message of eternal love for all mankind. 

Taking the sick and sobbing mother by the hand, 
the minister spoke a few words of Jesus and of the 



258 Service in the King's Guards. 

heavenly world to which the little one had gone. 
Her heart was ready for the message. She heard 
with gladness ; her tears were stayed, and her nervous 
agitation quieted. 

Soon we were walking with the friends, through the 
prairie grass and the withered stalks of summer 
flowers, to the little open grave on the hillside. 

"All that tread 
The globe are but a handful to the tribes 
That slumber in its bosom." 

But no monument was here in this wide, unbroken 
wilderness, save the dried, wild, waving grass of 
winter. 

The little procession turned away from the lonely 
grave in silence, which was broken by the convulsive 
cry of the little two-year-old boy, who could not know 
why his little brother should be left in the cold 
ground. He was borne homeward in the arms of an 
aunt, who vainly tried to comfort him as he stretched 
out his little hands toward the silent grave with the 
pathetic wail, u Baby ! baby ! " 

The ride homeward was one not soon to be forgotten. 
Three or four wild, rollicking boys, thoughtless, but not 
malicious or unsympathetic, shared the management 
of the reins, which were supposed to guide the two 
half-broken Indian ponies before the small lumber 



A Funeral at the Indian Reservation. 259 

wagon. The "load" was composed of the preacher 
and a young Indian. 

The way was over bluffs and through ravines, a 
partial track here and there, alternating with no road 
at all. The feeling was as though out at sea where 
" sailing was now dangerous," and the words of Paul 
came to mind, " This voyage will be with hurt and 
much damage." Now dashing down precipitous bluffs, 
with the half-tamed ponies at a dead run, the boys 
laughing and shouting, on we darted through the 
ravines, to find a little lull, for breath, as we ascended 
the steeps of the next bluff. Up again, the minister 
quieting his nerves as best he could, then clenching 
with both hands the hard seat on which he was trying 
to sit, as the team dashed downward again into the 
rough tumble of the next ravine. One might have 
supposed those boys fresh from a " Wild West show " 
or a war dance, instead of a funeral. And yet they 
meant no ill. It was simply that their wild, untamed 
life must have vent. 

But three or four miles of such journeying was 
enough. The young Sioux who had acted as guide 
was a pilot for the somewhat dangerous crossing of 
the " Big Muddy." He faithfully found the safe trail 
over the crumbling ice, rowed across the turbulent 
mid-stream, and would not leave to return when he 
struck the ice on the farther side of the river. It was 



260 Service in the King's Guards. 

now dark, and he must see that the minister took the 
right direction over the ice, and landed at the foot of 
the right street to lead directly to his home on the 
opposite side of the town. If the ride had given one 
vivid object lesson, the faithful Indian guide had 
given another on the brotherhood of man. 



CHAPTER XXXII. 

INCIDENTS OF THE WINTER. A REVERT. 

rj^HE Christmas morning was one of cheer. The 
-L Sunday-school celebration of the evening be- 
fore had been highly successful, and though tired, 
the workers were in glad mood. A number of friends 
and neighbors, one after another, called at the parson- 
age that morning to exchange congratulations, to talk 
over the occasion, and to u see the presents" which 
had been generously bestowed on the minister and 
his family. So it happened that the wife's prepa- 
rations for the Christmas dinner with which she had 
planned to cheer her husband were somewhat delayed. 
When the last caller had departed she hurriedly went 
to the kitchen, to make up for lost time. A closet in 
which stores were kept had also a trapdoor leading 
to the coal cellar. For the first and last time in the 
family history that trapdoor was left opeu, the con- 
fusion and excitement of the morning having caused 
it for a moment to be forgotten. At that moment 
the wife in her haste rushed into the closet, and in 
another instant was dashed to the foot of the cellar 

261 



262 Service in the King's Guards. 

stairs. Fortunately no bones were broken, but pale 
and bruised, and almost fainting from nervous shock, 
she was assisted to her bed, where she lay for days in 
enforced rest. One limb was so injured that a year 
elapsed before entire recovery, and for the first two 
months there was much suffering, although not entire 
inability to use it. 

Early in the new year a correspondence with a 
friend at the east, a successful evangelist, had resulted 
in his promise to spend a few months in this territory, 
and now we began to look forward to his coming. In 
the absence of the minister during the autumn the 
pulpit had been variously supplied. Once Friday 
night had come, and no one knew how the next 
Sunday morning service was to be provided for. It 
chanced that a visiting minister arrived on the train 
that evening, en route for the Black Hills. An imme- 
diate call in the interests of the vacant pulpit revealed 
the fact that by a day's previous delay he was pre- 
vented from having sufficient time to reach his desti- 
nation by Saturday night. Unwilling to travel on 
the Sabbath, he cheerfully accepted the invitation to 
minister in this church, and preached with great ac- 
ceptance to the large congregation. In the evening 
a Sunday-school concert which had been previously 
arranged for derived enhanced interest from his 
presence and cooperation, and he went forward on his 



Incidents of the Winter. 263 

long journey on Monday morning with the thanks of 
the needy church. 

Another Sabbath, by invitation of the pastor, two 
lady missionaries from the nearest Indian mission 
supplied the service. They told the large gathering 
the truth about the Indians — how cruel were the 
prejudices against them, how hard their lot, and how 
great the promise of Christian work among these, 
their neighbors. At the close of the meeting many, 
business men and others, went to the platform to 
thank the missionaries for what they had said, to 
offer help, and to promise a better feeling toward 
the Indians in the future. 

Another Sabbath was the occasion of the dedica- 
tion of the second church edifice in the place, and 
by invitation our people united with the Methodist 
brethren in the joyful service. One blessing in these 
new communities is the public spirit which recognizes 
every advance as a public blessing, and which rejoices 
in a common interest in the progress of all good things 
on the part of the better elements in the community. 
The spirit of sectarianism, sometimes so harmful 
and divisive, had not as yet made inroads on the 
peace of this community. It needed all the churches 
it had, and all rejoiced in signs of prosperity. 

At one time, before the holiday season, the mis- 
sionary wife seized an opportunity to make a long- 
promised visit to stations up the river. 



264 Service in the King's Guards. 

The quiet converse of days with the one lady at the 
Indian Mission, left, for the time being, in charge 
alone, on account of exigencies in the work else- 
where, was indeed a refreshment to the spirit. 

The private room of the two single ladies connected 
with the mission was set apart for the privileged 
guest. How beautiful it seemed ! The large, warm 
log house on the river bottom was attractive from 
without. Well made of hewed logs, with plastered 
interstices and inner walls, good chimneys, a flower 
garden in front, a fine, large vegetable garden in the 
rear, rejoicing in that rare protection, a good fence ; 
cultivated fields stretching around and beyond the 
farm buildings, and the neat Indian church adjoining, 
with its spire and bell, — all told of a civilization which 
was the outgrowth of years of toil and hardship, by 
the side of which the self-denials of home missiona- 
ries seemed light. The surrounding homes of con- 
verted Indians were a cheering sight, even though 
troops of dogs and children, and occasional tepees, 
were reminders of the state from which the people 
were emerging. 

This room of the guest was a happy place, not for 
the beauty and comfort of the embroidered sofa pil- 
low, or the attractive little bookcase on the wall filled 
with choice books of poetry and literature, which 
might rest the weary toilers sometimes more effect- 



Incidents of the Winter. 265 

ually than lounge or medicine ; or the many little 
devices which here, like the fair Una, made u a sun- 
shine in the shady place," a home in the midst of a 
material and moral wilderness ; but for the fact that 
these were tokens of the love and sympathy of east- 
ern friends. The spirit of Christian love, which 
made this self-immolation on the altar of devotion a 
joy instead of a sacrifice, this self-exile from the 
companionship of human friendship to find the divine 
Presence a perennial inspiration, and in the lifting up 
of the lowly a sure riveting of the bonds of human 
brotherhood in Christ, — this was the blessing of that 
visit. In the light of this blessing, the flowers in the 
bay windows, the books, the music, the cheer of the 
family table, the morning and evening worship, the 
vista across the intervale and the wide-flowing river, 
the converse on missionary experience, the meeting 
here of a gentleman fresh from three years of study 
in German universities, the prayer meeting of Indian 
women, and *the acquaintance with a certain Indian 
child, — all fell into place, like the bits of colored glass 
in a kaleidoscope, to form a mosaic of light and color 
and beauty to be remembered with delight while 
memory retains its treasures. 

A letter beseeching return to the field of duty cut 
short this visit, and, with a hurried visit to friends at 
the distant fort, we turned our faces homeward. 



266 Service in the King's Guards. 

With a crack of the whip our four government 
mules set off at a canter down the long hill from the 
commandant's headquarters. A day and two nights 
we had enjoyed the genial hospitality of an officer and 
his family at the post, and now by the same thought- 
ful courtesy we were sent on our way. Riding in an 
ambulance, under the escort of an army officer and 
soldiers in blue, with the best seat, surrounded by the 
warmest wraps, is not very different from other rides ; 
but the ideal differs, and the situation is novel. The 
most respectful and thoughtful care surrounds the 
lone woman in the lumbering but comfortable vehicle ; 
responses to occasional remarks are ready, and infor- 
mation, when sought, is freely given. Conversation 
between the soldiers is free from rudeness and pro- 
fanity, and is suggestive, in its unconscious revela- 
tions, of those strata in human nature which are in 
all conditions alike. An honest, incorruptible man 
receives unequivocal indorsement, though mayhap 
from tongues and hearts not unpracticed in deceit. 
A kind and thoughtful officer is " a regular mother to 
a company," though perchance open to criticism in 
other respects. Intercourse between superior and 
inferior in rank is without stiffness on the one side, 
while on the other, never forgetting a respectful 
manner. On both sides the feelings and instincts of 
a common manhood are tacitly recognized as the 
ground of interchange and fellowship. 



Incidents of the Winter. 267 

After the first few miles of the long drive, the 
conversation drifts and eddies into channels which the 
listener does not care to follow, and she abandons 
herself to the luxury of revery. 

The situation suggests the variety of conditions 
which a few years of frontier life supply. The first, 
the second, and the third homes passed in view. First, 
there was the tiny cabin, smaller than the least of the 
bedchambers left behind in the large and pleasant 
New England house. Without paint, plaster, or 
chimney, the low attic allowing the low bedstead only 
beneath the highest pitch of the roof ; the tar paper 
covering, visible and odorous between the rafters, and 
at once saluting sense of sight and smell and touch. 
Then came the advanced stage, of a year's residence 
in a church lecture room, with brick chimney, painted 
woodwork, plastered wall, and solid foundation, albeit 
with inlets for cold wind and ever-present dust that 
could not be stopped, and with lack of conveniences 
that sometimes sorely tempted to the conclusion that 
life has some situations which cannot be conquered. 
Then came the large relief of a pleasant parsonage, 
prayed and wrought into being before our eyes, 

Not alone as to places of abode did this variety 
marshal itself into remembered procession. In food 
supplies, there was the almost entire lack of fresh 
meat during the first season ; no fruit either ; ice a 



268 Service in the King's Guards. 

luxury not to be thought of during the long, hot 
season ; water from the hardest of wells and bitter 
with alkali, water dipped up for washing from a rail- 
way ditch, river water bought by the barrel best of 
all ; but never yet enough of any kind. Then there 
were the precious tea and sago and gelatine brought 
with us, no more to be replaced when the privilege of 
preparing delicacies for a sick neighbor had used the 
last ; the variety of forms in which milk and eggs had 
been prepared, when these, almost alone, could be had, 
until the minister declared he was sure he had eaten a 
large pail full of custard in one summer. Later there 
was an abundance of ducks and wild geese, with an 
occasional prairie chicken. Buffalo meat, venison, 
and antelope were our daily food for weeks of the first 
winter, and as rare luxuries we had tasted jelly made 
from the " buffalo berry," the wild plum, and the wild 
grape of the banks of the Missouri. 

Traveling was not all by rail. Now in a wagon, 
plunging through the sloughs, with terror, lest each 
one should prove bottomless ; now lost on the trackless 
prairie; now on a flatboat on the muddy Missouri, 
with travelers, horses, and wagon in one enclosure and 
no seat ; now trembling in a frail skiff, laden to the 
water's edge, clinging to the seat which a stolid Indian 
woman with her bag of corn had just vacated, but 
forgetting one's fears in the glory of the daydawn 



Incidents of the Winter. 269 

stealing over landscape and majestic river ; now in the 
vehicle which has been the faithful companion of one 
of the Riggses and his co-laborers for half a score of 
years, which has had its experience of complete somer- 
saults, with all its occupants, down the sides of preci- 
pices, and into gullies and treacherous streams, and 
which is the battered but still trusted survivor of many 
other 4 1 hair-breadth 'scapes " ; behind horses now 
faithful, now noted for their eccentricities ; sometimes 
with treacherous Indian and Texan ponies ; some- 
times as now, behind the most homely of mules. 

Escorts have been varied too. Now with the honor 
of the " brave boys in blue" for a safe conduct, and 
the sight of epaulettes and swords for reassurance ; 
now a long journey under the care of an Indian chief- 
tain, made gentle and human by Christianity ; now 
with a "foreign" missionary, who knew literally 
every mile of thousands on this frontier as though it 
were his hearthstone ; now with an army chaplain 
whom long years of experience had made cautious, 
but never afraid ; now with the reins in the hands of 
a converted Indian boy who knew, with the keen obser- 
vation of his race, every rock and pitfall and steep 
incline of the road ; now with a stage driver who 
u cared for none of these things," but was wisely 
wary of sloughs and bridgeless streams ; often with- 
out escort, in the company of men, alone, but, in all 



270 Service in the King's Guards. 

the experience of the years, with no instance of the 
slightest offered disrespect. 

A\ r e are fully embarked on the stream of reminis- 
cence. A strange chorus of sounds comes reverber- 
ating through the memory, which bring vividly to 
mind, as sounds will, the phases of life with which 
they are connected. The wild shriek of that first 
blizzard, coming down upon us in our earliest home 
before food or dish were there ; the fiendish soprano 
and thundering bass of the gusts, which for thirty-six 
hours rocked our dwelling and held us prisoners ; the 
liquid note of the meadow lark, which was the sole 
bird song of one summer ; the roar of distant storms 
in the night season ; the low sobs of a mother at the 
deathbed of her child ; the plaintive soaring of Chris- 
tian hymns beside open graves ; the shrill, despairing 
cry of a lost girl, hurried past our door to jail at 
midnight; the tramp of armed men, guarding past 
our dwelling, to and fro, day after day, a man on 
trial for murder ; sounds of drunken revelry, the 
rattle of dice, and the click of billiards, all the night 
long ; the whistles of the river steamer and the rail- 
road train, unspeakably welcome sounds, linking one, 
in the first year, with civilization left behind — a 
medley inharmonious, but not without its strains of 
melody. The last refrain was the voice of a pack 
of hungry wolves which, on this very journey, had 



Incidents of the Winter. 271 

assailed our ears in the twilight and caused our heart 
to beat with apprehension as we rode over the weird 
hills, in gathering darkness, for miles without leaving 
the almost human cry behind. 

The review went onward. There were funerals and 
weddings, baptisms, ordinations, and dedications ; 
sick beds and scenes of cheer ; the first words of 
prayer from hearts which had come to themselves and 
the Father's house in want ; there were expressions of 
Christian gladness and peace and joy. There had 
been comfort and triumph all along the way from the 
Source whence help and strength never fail, and 
which, almost in audible tones, and with never-to-be- 
forgotten tenderness, had said at the first, — 

" Whispering softly, l Wanderer, come! 
Follow me, I '11 guide thee home ! ' ' 

A question from the officer on the seat beside us 
recalled our wandering thoughts. The ambulance 
driver draws his reins, and we are at the end of our 
revery and our journey. 



CHAPTER XXXIII. 



MISSIONARY RAIDS. 



THE calls for missionary work in the new towns 
are many. Some distance up the river a place 
has been lately founded where ten thousand dollars' 
worth of city lots has been already sold, and it is 
time some one was looking after the founding of a 
church in the city that seeks to be. 

The minister had reconnoitered the place already, 
and thus knew about what to expect. On the present 
trip, by stage, he had the company of a young man 
and his wife from Iowa. They had read the papers, 
and seen the circulars and handbills sent out by the 
real estate speculators. Won by the fine prospects 
set forth, they had boxed and shipped their house- 
hold goods, including an elegant piano, and were 
now on their way to this promising young city, where 
they expected to find a home and make their fortune. 
They had arrived at the end of the railroad on Friday 
evening, and were in the Saturday morning's stage 
when we entered it. They were well-dressed, intelli- 
gent traveling companions, and soon disclosed their 

272 



Missionary Raids. 273 

purpose and destination. It was evident that they 
were without experience in the rough side of life, 
and were certain to be sorely disappointed. They 
had been misled by the exaggerations and mislead- 
ing statements published, and their ideal city was, as 
yet, chiefly on paper. 

The day was wearing away. The sun was dipping 
toward the western horizon when, on the summit of 
the bluffs, the travelers descried the river in the 
valley below. The minister had not described their 
" city," thinking it better they should discover it for 
themselves. They eagerly looked forth, expecting, 
no doubt, to see well-planned streets, lined by sub- 
stantial business blocks, and avenues graced by 
attractive homes. 

What they did see was the river's bed, the pale, 
withered grass of the bottom lands, and the barren, 
rocky bluffs opposite those over which they were 
driving. Answering their inquiry, a few new shanties 
were pointed out, set on the bleached and withered 
grass in the valley, about a mile and a half distant. 
They were to be pitied in their exclamations of 
surprise and the expression of sadness which mantled 
their faces. They were silent for the remainder of 
the journey. 

At the door of the little uncomely hotel, it was 
hoped some one would be ready to welcome them. 



274 Service in the King's Guards. 

But the party had all to themselves the barren, untidy 
office room, in which the fire had gone out. The 
landlord was absent, clerk there was none, and the 
landlady was preoccupied in the kitchen. Notwith- 
standing endeavors to find some one who would 
receive these strangers and assign them a room, 
it was a full half hour that they were left to their 
dejection in the cold office. At last the landlady 
came and showed them to a room. Soon the real 
estate speculators came in, to set forth in glowing 
terms the prospects of the place. But the iron had 
struck too deep into the soul of that sensitive 
woman. In the anguish of disappointment, her 
mind was already made up, and she would not be 
consoled. Once deceived by their representations, 
she wanted nothing more of them but to be let 
alone. That very night the young couple engaged 
their passage out of town by the returning stage. 
On Sunday morning we travelers parted, they to 
return to the east and the minister to preach the 
gospel where he was. 

The morning service was held in an unfinished, 
vacant room. The subject of the sermon was the 
relations of the gospel to the business thrift of any 
community, and the manifold importance of laying 
the foundations of a new town in righteousness. In 
the evening service was held in an unfinished store 
in a rival town not far away. 



Missionary Raids. 275 

On Monday the preacher took the Bismarck stage 
northward. After a prosperous journey he came, in 
the early evening, to a county seat, where he was to 
spend the night. It was picturesquely situated on 
the river bank, surrrounded by high bluffs, and, for 
a wonder, embowered in trees. He had had for a trav- 
eling companion a genial young lawyer, who had 
heard the sermon on the previous day, and who was 
not without sympathy in this Christian work. 

As usual, the hospitality of the hotel had to be 
sought, for there was no other to be expected. In 
the edge of the evening the travelers were set down 
at the hostelry, and met by a kind welcome, and soon 
refreshed by the warm supper, much needed. The 
remaining glimmer of daylight was used to " do the 
town." As had been expected, it was yet largely 
unbuilt, and without church or minister. Some in- 
telligent men held the county offices, and were now 
doing their business in a rude building made of logs. 
This was the courthouse. 

Some of the families were religious, and would 
gladly have preaching there as soon as the right 
man could be found. But as they mostly belonged 
to another religious persuasion, it was not wise for 
the missionary, even if he had so desired, to suggest 
a church of his order there. 

By the time these facts had been learned, it was 



276 Service in the King's Guards. 

ten o'clock, and the tired missionary prepared for 
rest, as he must set forward toward the objective 
points of his journey with the early morning. He 
had retired, when there was a rap at his door. 
When it was opened, there stood a messenger from 
the courthouse, sent by the county officers, request- 
ing the minister to make an address that night to a 
congregation already gathering. 

The missionary donned his clothing, and was soon 
ready for the service. The officials and their friends 
and acquaintances had gathered until the " court- 
house " was full — an intelligent and most interest- 
ing audience, ready for the Word. To the midnight 
message they gave a most attentive hearing. The 
service was not as long as that in which Paul once 
preached by night, nor did any young man fall from 
an upper window to lose his life. But it was one 
to be remembered, nevertheless, by speaker and 
hearers. 

The journey of the following day led up over the 
high bluffs, and across a rolling, treeless plateau, 
where were few signs of human habitation. Occa- 
sional valleys or depressions in the prairie furnished 
shelter for wild animals. Once that day a coyote, 
or prairie wolf, was seen, which fled as the traveler 
approached. He was fleet as a greyhound, and in 
size a little larger than a good-sized yellow fox. 



Missionary Raids. 277 

A few hours' ride brought the missionary to the 
place he was seeking, where he found one intelligent 
woman filling the double position of merchant and 
postmistress. She evinced a real interest in the 
religious welfare of her own soul and in that of the 
community. As was his custom, in lack of other 
accommodations, the minister sought the hotel. This 
was the most unpretentious he had yet seen. It was 
a low one-story shanty of a room and a half ! The 
room was sitting room, dining room, office room, and 
kitchen in one. The other apartment, a space about 
six feet wide and twelve or fourteen feet long, was 
against the side of the wall, opposite the door. A 
series of bunks, one above another, like the berths 
in a canal boat, occupied this wall, to the number of 
six or eight. Into one of these hard and uncomfort- 
able places the missionary crept, to get what sleep 
he could ; nor did it prove to be the worst lodging 
of his missionary life. 

A creek or small river bed, now dry, ran through 
the town. Fed by the moisture sometimes there, 
some small trees clustered along its edge, and in a 
grove of these service was appointed for the next 
Sunday forenoon. The two intervening week days 
were devoted to a side trip, in order to learn the 
condition of settlements still more isolated. Engag- 
ing the services of a team and a young man for 
driver who knew the way, the missionary proceeded. 



278 Service in the King's Guards. 

His route led through a town of prairie dogs. The 
soil was honeycombed with their holes over a space 
some three miles wide and five or six miles long. 
This was the largest dog town the missionary had 
ever seen. The little creatures sat up at the edge 
of their holes by hundreds, and at human approach, 
with a short "Yip, yip ! " would disappear. It is 
said that these prairie dogs often dwell in the same 
dens with owls and rattlesnakes. More than once 
the traveler saw the dog and the owl at the mouth 
of the same hole. 

This visit was one of reconnoissance merely, as the 
missionary knew nothing of the circumstances ; but it 
awakened an interest which led to another visit a few 
weeks later, when on a single Sabbath he organized 
two churches ten miles apart. 

Back at the village where he had left his appoint- 
ment for service the following Sabbath, the missionary 

learned that the Right Reverend Bishop S , from 

the east, was spending a part of his vacation in the 
embryo village and surrounding region. The mission- 
ary had never met him, and had no special reason to 
expect his presence at the Sunday service. But when 
the people came together the good bishop came with 
them. He readily accepted the invitation to share in 
the service, and remained also to officiate in the after- 
noon, while the missionary rode ten miles to preach in 
another village. 



Missionary Raids. 279 

The pleasure, the uplift of soul, which comes with 
the effort to preach the gospel to the hungry and poor 
in spirit in these new communities, can be learned only 
by experience. This Sabbath, with one service in the 
grove, and another ten miles distant in a rude place 
built for a dance hall, will not soon be forgotten. 
Such opportunities for effective service lead the minis- 
ter to feel that "it does pay" to be a missionary at 
the front. The eager attention, the sympathetic hear- 
ing, the cordial hand grasp, the " Godspeed " after 
service, seem to bring together the sowing and the 
reaping time. 

The Sabbath past, the missionary looks homeward. 
He is forty-five miles from the nearest railroad station. 
As the running of the stage is uncertain he is glad to 
get passage to the railroad by private conveyance. A 
lumber wagon is going thither, and, seated beside the 
driver, he is early on his way. 

It was nearly noon when the wagon came to a 
farmhouse. The driver said it was about halfway, 
and it would be wise to rest and feed the team 
here. He entered the house, to return with the 
good news that they could have stabling for the 
horses and food for themselves. After the horses 
were cared for the missionary entered the house, to 
find there a woman preparing dinner. It was a com- 
fortable house for the country, and in the sitting room 
he awaited the announcement of dinner, haunted by 



280 Service in the King's Guards. 

the sad face of the woman he had seen for but a 
moment. 

At the table he wished to learn something of the 
surroundings. 

"Have you pleasant neighbors?" (None were in 
sight.) 

"Well, I don't know. They are good enough, I 
suppose. " 

' ; Have you any meeting near — any preaching 
service ? " 

" No ; and it wouldn't make any odds to me if 
there was. If there was one on every corner of the 
lot, I would n't go anear one of 'em." 

It was evident what that sad face meant. The 
preacher could only say, "Well, we all need the 
Lord's help. If we are not satisfied with our neigh- 
bors, and do not like those professing to be Christians, 
we must not refuse His mercy and reject His love." 

It was the end of the conversation. The travelers 
finished their dinner, paid for their accommodations, 
and went on their way. 

The driver said the woman had remarked to him 
aside, " I didn't s'pose I was talkin' to a preacher." 

The next day the missionary was at home, to find 
that "the God of all comfort" had kept in peace those 
"remaining by the stuff," as well as him who had 
gone forth to battle. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

REVIVALS. 

THE work in the home parish was going forward. 
A young man had been engaged to supply the 
pulpit for a few months, and our friend, the evangel- 
ist, had promised to come to the aid of the church. 
Tarrying at one place and another by the way, as his 
services were called for by the churches, he at last 
arrived at the parsonage. A blessing came with him, 
and the joy of Christian service found at this time to 
some the highest sense of recompense vouchsafed 
in a lifetime. There were afternoon and evening 
meetings when the voice of prayer rose with new 
earnestness in the church, and new-found joy in God 
found expression in the testimonies. What a comfort 
was the privacy of the parsonage in these days of 
special interest ! The preciousness of one room there 
will ever be associated, not with the family comfort 
to which it ministered so abundantly, but with the 
private interviews with individuals, which were there 
held by appointment. There the secret history of 
more than one soul was revealed to friendly sympathy ; 
vows were taken in the intimacy of its sheltering 

281 



282 Service in the King's Guards. 

walls, which were nobly fulfilled in the presence of the 
public congregation ; there conversations were held, 
the memory of which months afterwards was recalled 
by the kindling of manly eyes and the silent but 
sympathetic grasp of strong hands. 

More wonderful were the known results of the 
labors of our friend in the dear church of our first 
parish. This had now come to be the center not 
only of a growing village, but of a large surrounding 
region. The time was March, in melting weather, 
when ice had been transformed into mud, and the 
sloughs were nearly impassable, the roads through 
them being overflowed with water from one to three 
feet deep. 

But the spirit of God, in answer to earnest prayer, 
was poured out on that community. From forty to 
sixty came every day over the nearly impassable 
roads, from five to eight miles beyond the bounds of 
the village. The distances and the state of the roads 
led the families coming to the morning meetings to 
bring their dinners and their suppers with them, and, 
as no one was left at home to care for the children, 
the babies were brought also. One Sabbath it was 
said that the number of children under three years 
of age in the church was over forty. 

A lay brother here, who had been among the first 
to welcome us on our arrival in the territory, now had 



Revivals. 283 

the burden of many souls laid on his spirit. There 
was a tiny room over the vestibule in the tower of the 
church which became his prayer closet. From that 
belfry, looking far out over the boundless prospect, 
agonizing prayer went up by day and by night — 
prayer which the Father saw in secret and rewarded 
openly. When this brother descended the long flight 
of stairs from his belfry, it was with shining face and 
the enduement of power. 

Every day in the lecture room of that church the 
midday and the evening meals were spread by those 
who brought their provisions from a distance, and, as 
at the day of Pentecost, " all that believed were 
together, and had all things common. . . . And they, 
continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and 
breaking bread," — not at home, but in the sanctuary, 
— u did eat their meat with gladness and singleness 
of heart, praising God, and having favour with all the 
people." 

The brother to whom reference has been made, with 
his wife, came five miles to attend the meetings ; and 
he literally lived, for the time, in the church, going 
home but once in twelve days when the religious 
interest was highest. 

The whole community was profoundly moved. The 
results of such a work can never be numbered in time. 
Once a list of nearly sixty names was written out of 



284 Service in the King's Guards. 

those especially interested ; names which we could 
hardly read for tears of joy ; names we had learned 
to love in those earliest meetings and Sunday-school 
sessions held in the depot, the schoolhouse, and the 
church ; names, some of which have since been read 
far and wide in the roll of the church militant ; names, 
some of which are now inscribed on the roll of the 
church triumphant. At more remote, but remarkable, 
consequences we will glance in another chapter. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 

A PROMISING BEGINNING. 

A LETTER of inquiry and explanation had come 
from a stranger, telling of spiritual wants, 
great and many. He asked if the missionary would 
" come over and help " when the winter's snow had 
melted away. The reply was soon sent: " As much 
as in us lies, we are ready." Soon the weather was 
favorable for the proposed meetings. A journey 
of one hundred and fifty miles by rail, and twenty 
miles by stage, brought the missionary to the point 
designated. 

He had supposed it might be something of a village. 
Three or four miles before he reached it, the stage 
driver pointed out in the distance the settlement he 
sought. It consisted of one sod building, used for 
the threefold purpose of post office, store, and 
dwelling ! 

Here the stage set him down, and rumbled on its 
departing way. Inquiry revealed the fact that the 
friend on whose invitation he had come lived on his 
" claim" five miles distant. Various unfeasible plans 
for traversing that five miles were being revolved in 

285 



286 Service in the King's Guards* 

the minister's mind, when happily the writer of the 
letter appeared in sight. Which was the more glad to 
see the other it was hard to tell. That hearty Chris- 
tian greeting over, they two took their way over the 
swells and through the sloughs. Arrived at the home 
of his new-found friend, another sod house, the mis- 
sionary was introduced to the five young lady daugh- 
ters. One of these had graduated from the classical 
course at Oberlin the year before, holding, as was 
afterward learned, front rank in scholarship in a class 
of fifty young men and women. The other sisters, 
though not as far advanced in collegiate attainments, 
were not behind in natural gifts and graces. Two or 
three were teachers ; all were of marked intelligence 
and force of character. The mother had " passed on 
before," and the father and his five daughters had 
come to try their fortune in securing government lands. 
Three of the daughters could make " claims " in their 
own right, and the family had thus together secured 
in one body between one thousand and eleven hun- 
dred acres of beautiful land. 

As night was approaching, the first wonder of the 
guest — a common one in receiving hospitality in 
frontier homes — was how the family and the new 
arrival were to get through the night. To find lodging 
for a family of seven or eight, sometimes in a house 
of one room, rarely with more than two, seems a diffi- 



A Promising Beginning. 287 

cult problem. Here, as always, it was found that the 
"will" could find a "way." When the hour for 
retiring had come, the guest was conducted to a 
smaller sod house, some fifteen rods distant, on the 
"claim" of one of the daughters. It was cozy, 
with bed and carpet, stove and lamp. By dint of feed- 
ing the stove with hay, one of the daughters had 
thoughtfully made the room warm for the expected 
guest. If it seemed a little lonely, it was never- 
theless a comely and comfortable room, and the mis- 
sionary slept and awoke to rejoice in the light of the 
Sabbath. 

As the hour for service approached, all were ready 
and eager to be in their places, and a lumber wagon, 
with a team of mules, was ample enough to provide 
conveyance. Arrived at the place of meeting, it was 
found to be the rudest of shanties, built for a grocery. 
A few rough boards, lying loosely on the ground, and 
sprinkled with flour, formed the floor. For seats there 
were a few rough benches and a few rough boards. 
The damp and chilly winds of March were pressing 
in through the wide open cracks between the un- 
matched boards of the sheltering walls. A small 
stove, with a meager supply of soft coal, did what 
it could to drive back the cold. The people came 
from near and far, until the room was crowded, and 
the preacher, willing to give all the room possible to 



288 Service in the King's Guards. 

the congregation, had crowded himself backwards into 
a corner. 

It was soon evident that the intelligence of the 
congregation was by no means to be measured by its 
narrow and uncomely place of meeting. There were 
present a large proportion of bright, refined, and 
scholarly hearers. 

Account for it as we may, there are inspiration and 
uplift of soul to a preacher in these rude frontier 
scenes, which come but seldom in elegant surround- 
ings and more formal services. As usual, when the 
congregation pressed close upon the speaker, in 
default of table and desk, he stood with his Bible in 
one hand and Gospel Hymn Book in the other. On 
this occasion it was an unusual privilege to "divide 
the word of truth " with such ability as the Lord 
gave. Lifted up to the heights of this privilege, with 
the bright hopes of immortality thrilling the heart, 
and with the verified promise, u Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world," one soon 
forgot all that was unattractive in present surround- 
ings. How often has it been so in other and similar 
scenes ! 

One month later the missionary was here again, to 
experience a repetition of all that has just been noted, 
and also to see an added interest among the people. 
On the way homeward he stopped over night with a 



A Promising Beginning. 289 

young farmer, who freely expressed his interest in the 
service. He was the son of a Congregational deacon 
in one of the older states, and he said, " That was 
the first sermon I have heard in two years." And 
yet he was a member of the church to which his 
father belonged. 

Soon a movement was made to secure a better house 
for worship. In the poverty of the people it was with 
much difficulty that one hundred dollars was raised for 
this purpose. But so great was the felt necessity that 
it was determined to go forward and do the most pos- 
sible with the money in hand. In a few weeks the 
missionary was glad to go up to the new house for 
the Sabbath services. If the new accommodations 
were not what we could wish, there was the satisfac- 
tion of knowing they were a great improvement on 
the old. 

Of the outward aspect of the new building it is not 
necessary now to speak. The missionary was some- 
what disappointed on entering it for the first time, 
on Sunday morning. In one corner, not far from 
where the pulpit would have stood, had there been 
any, was a carpenter's bench, beneath which the work- 
men had stowed away shavings and bits of board. 
For seats there were strips of board or scantlings laid 
on nail casks. 

To the second Sabbath he was looking forward with 



290 Service in the King's Guards. 

much interest, on account of special services expected 
that day. The morning dawned dark and rainy, and 
it was with some depression that he watched the 
clouds, fearing that the service might be prevented. 
" Many a cloudy morning turns out a fair day," he 
thought ; and he remembered also the promise that 
all things, storm as well as sunshine, "shall work 
together for good." Soon the rain ceased, the clouds 
lifted, and the sun shone forth, it seemed, more 
brightly than ever. 

A ride of two or three miles brought the missionary 
to the place of worship. On entering, he found that 
some of the nail kegs had been taken away on one 
side, leaving the boards slanting to the ground from 
their supports on the other side. The only hope for 
seats now was on what might be concealed in the pile 
of shavings under the workbench. The eager search, 
as for hidden gold, was rewarded by finding, at last, 
blocks and bits of board enough to pile one on 
another for supports to the seats. When the con- 
gregation entered they found the seats in readiness 
and the house in order. There was no need of anxi- 
ety as to the ventilation of the room, for the congre- 
gation could look out on every side, through the cracks 
between the boards, to the sky and the prairie. When 
the wind blew it was a breezy audience room. 

In this sanctuary, such as it was, the missionary 



A Promising Beginning. 291 

held services this day with real delight. There he 
organized a church of sixteen members ; and a more 
intelligent company of that size was rarely, it is 
believed, organized into a Christian church. 

That was the day of small things in that place. 
A railroad has since reached it, the community has 
grown, and the church has gone forward with its 
heaven-appointed work, the largest and most indis- 
pensable factor in the Christian civilization of a great 
region. Five years afterward — years of great immi- 
gration — it was still ' ' twenty miles from any other 
church of its order north or south, and forty miles 
east or west." At first it had been that distance from 
any church at all. One of the sixteen original mem- 
bers writes of its history as follows : — 

" The people who compose the church came to get 
for themselves free homes. We came with very 
limited means. One man had one hundred dollars; 
another, perhaps, two hundred ; another, fifty ; and 
some, after filing on their land, had absolutely no- 
thing. Many of us had come from Christian homes, 
where we had the advantages of church, Sunday-school, 
and prayer meeting ; and we brought with us the 
desire for Christian worship. Early in June of the 
first season a number of the people met at a neighbor's 
house and organized a Sunday-school. We continued 
to meet at the same place during the summer, some 



292 Service in the King's Guards. 

coming ten or eleven miles with ox teams. Later in 
the season we were enabled to get the use of a sod 
house, some twenty by thirty feet inside. In this old 
sod house, with only two small windows to let in the 
light, besides the cracks in the door, with no floor 
except the black loam, we met, until the snow and 
severe weather made it impossible to get there. 

a w e recall many interesting experiences in the old 
house. One good brother went one morning after a 
storm and found the house with two inches of snow 
over the floor. The stove and the hay, which we use 
for fuel, were gracefully wreathed in crystals. He 
brushed the snow off the stove, built a fire, and then, 
with a little board, cleared the floor. The house was 
in readiness for the congregation, and although the 
smoke puffed down the pipe so as almost to strangle 
us, we had a good attendance and a profitable service. 
Some of the sisters who used to go with oxen, and 
were more than three hours on the road, tell how they 
enlivened the trips by singing, studying the Sunday- 
school lesson, and sometimes by reading a sermon. 

" Early the following spring we reorganized the 
Sunday-school, using another building, more centrally 
located, ten by fourteen feet in size. Our numbers 
increased, and we saw it would be impossible to hold 
services here long, and so a plan for a union church 
building was talked of. But how could we build with 



A Promising Beginning. 293 

so little money? Each one was ready to do all he 
could. Still our means fell short of even enough to 
put up this rough building. God opened the way ; for 
it was so ordered that one of our number, a good man 
from Illinois, received some money and lent us enough 
to make up the deficiency. 

" It was pleasing to notice the interest that every one 
took in the building, and the feeling of ownership that 
each one had. Our ladies, who furnished the picnic 
dinner on that day, took as much pleasure in driving 
a nail into this building as some of our railroad mag- 
nates do in driving the golden spike. It was such an 
improvement on any place in which we had met before 
that we might be pardoned for a little feeling of pride. 

" Then came the question, ' What shall we do for a 
minister, and how can we support one if he should 
come?' We found it impossible to do anything that 
autumn, but we kept up religious services by reading 
sermons. 

"Again and again, we called for Christian young 
men from the eastern seminaries ; but none would 
consent to take so new and large a field under such 
difficulties, and still we were left to ourselves. Wlien 
arrangements were almost made with one would-be 
missionary, some drawback attendant on our frontier 
life, or distance from the railroad, made him give up 
the thought. Another, when about to come, was pre- 



294 Service in the King's Guards, 

vented by ill health. Finally, the conclusion ivas 
forced upon us that ive could not expect outside help. 
We must depend on ourselves. Therefore we con- 
eluded to call one of our own number to act as pastor 
and carry on the work among us." 

Is not this a repetition of the principles and the 
practice of the apostles? And is it any wonder that 
jo} 7 — that " joy of the Lord " which is " our strength" 
— came to one who shared, even in small measure, 
the privilege of helping such beginnings as these, and 
that he sometimes felt as though he were actually 
privileged thus to enter into the u Acts of the 
Apostles " ? 

Now this is no longer an isolated community. Rail- 
roads have opened up the country, and the church, in 
a comely edifice, is the center of a railroad village, 
with a greatly increased surrounding population. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



BY THE WAY. 



IN the " much land to be possessed," only the more 
urgent calls can be early attended to. One came 
from u near the forty-sixth parallel," and an appoint- 
ment to " be there" was made. The journey was 
two hundred and thirty miles by rail and twenty by 
stage. But the stage ran only once or twice a week, 
and not on the day of the minister's arrival at the 
end of the railroad. After waiting and watching for 
some farmer homeward bound, with whom he could 
catch a ride, it became certain that no such good 
fortune was in store for him. So he engaged a man 
to take him in a two-wheeled vehicle, paying two 
dollars therefor. It was a rough, uncomfortable, jolt- 
ing ride, and he was glad when the end was reached. 
He was kindly received by a family whom he found 
to have come from the valley of the Kennebec, and 
from a town adjoining the one of the preacher's 
nativity. It was pleasant to talk of friends and 
home, and of persons well known to both hosts and 
guests there on the unbroken soil of a new land, two 

295 



296 Service in the King's Guards. 

thousand miles from the scenes of their childhood. 
Here was a theological student from Andover, spend- 
ing his summer vacation — a young man of promise, 
who had been doing a good work among the people. 
He met the missionary on the evening of his arrival, 
and together they planned for the services of the 
following day. 

The student was boarding on the farther side of the 
river, and was to come over for the missionary with 
his rowboat on Sunday morning, which he did. 
Arrived at the other side, ponies were in waiting to 
take the two to the place of meeting, some miles 
distant. 

Riding on ponyback was a thing to which the 
missionary had not been accustomed since boyhood 
days. But he managed to " hold on," and made 
the journey in time for service. The ponies were 
ridden on the gallop as long as was convenient, either 
for the " beasties " or the riders, and then they were 
brought to a walk, and went quietly forward until 
fears of being late at the service would incite to a 
renewal of the gallop. At the end of the journey 
a rather intelligent congregation was found gathered 
for service in a store-loft. To them the Word was 
preached with gladness. Then the missionary re- 
turned by the help of ponies and rowboat to another 
service on the other side of the river in the afternoon. 



By the Way, 297 

Here he met a larger congregation, to whom he 
preached, and then proceeded to organize a church 
and administer the communion. To the great enjoy- 
ment of establishing Christian institutions was added, 
on this occasion, the special and unexpected pleasure 
of meeting in these new scenes a goodly number of 
persons not only from his own native state, but from 
the very scenes of his childhood and youth. It 
seemed like serving one's own people. 

The day's labor ended, thoughts turned to the 
homeward way. Time was precious. How was the 
railroad to be reached twenty miles distant in time 
for the returning train next day? There was no 
Monday stage, and the farmers were pressed with 
the labor of gathering their harvests. The only hope 
was that the missionary might get a ride with a farmer 
who was going to the railroad station for a load of 
lumber next day. He lived two or three miles away, 
and was likely to start early. As he did not know 
of the wish to ride with him, it was necessary to 
start betimes. 

At three o'clock in the morning the missionary was 
up and ready, with valise packed and a cold lunch 
in lieu of breakfast. The young student brother was 
to come over the river and accompany him to the 
railroad, but was not there at the time agreed upon. 
The missionarv looked and waited in vain. As he 



298 Service in the King's Guards. 

had a heavy valise, and knew not how long the delay 
might be, it seemed best to start alone. All nature 
was yet silent, but the day was beginning to dawn, 
as he set out to trudge over the way, with valise in 
hand. In sight, at last, of the farmer's, he saw that 
worthy watering his horses, already harnessed for the 
journey. Looking backward he beheld the belated 
young friend coming on with lively strides. 

The farmer, going for lumber, had removed the 
box from his wagon, for convenience and to lighten 
his load. There were only the wheels, the axles, 
and the long reach between them, but he was willing 
to take the missionary along. A board was found, 
long enough to reach from end to end of the skele- 
ton wagon. On the forward end, between the wheels, 
the driver seated himself ; the slender young minister 
was seated on the middle of the board, — which broke 
beneath his weight before the journey was over, — 
while the missionary took up his place at the further 
end of the board, between the wheels and over " the 
hind ex," with his valise to hold before him, and his 
feet dangling toward the ground on either side the 
reach. The driver walked his horses every rod of 
the trackless way, and it was high noon with a 
scorching sun before the station was reached. But 
for the burden of luggage, it would have been as 
easy to walk that twenty miles, although boots and 



By the Way. 299 

clothing must have been cut by the wiry grass. As 
it was, there was need of patience. The board did 
not grow to be a softer seat, nor the spring of the 
wagon " ex " increase as the travelers " dragged their 
slow length along." 

That tedious journey had been made for the sake 
of preaching " a free gospel" ; but the Irishman, with 
whom we had been riding, though civil, was not gen- 
erous, and we were compelled to pay his price for 
the memorable ride — two dollars. When we had 
thus paid for that ride, to call it a favor seemed, 
from one point of view, of doubtful propriety. 

On one occasion, to meet a Sabbath's appointment 
sixty miles away, the missionary took passage from 
the railroad town by stage. The day was bright, and 
he chose his seat beside the driver. With much to 
cheer, there is always enough to depress, in these 
long stage rides over the uninhabited prairie. Any- 
thing which tends to break the tedious monotony of 
the journey is welcomed. As we rattled and rumbled 
along, we were glad to hear a man within the vehicle 
singing hymns. 

The seats were all full inside, but by-and-by we 
halted to change horses. Then, alighting, we were 
glad to have some friendly words with the singing 
stranger. We found him tall and venerable in per- 
son, and decidedly Christian in word and atmosphere. 



300 Service in the King's Guards, 

He was an Englishman, who, with his wife, had just 
arrived by way of Montreal from his native land. 
They had a son living near our route, whom we had 
met. He seemed cheered as he learned that we knew 
his son, and our interest in him increased and grew 
into a desire to learn something of his religious his- 
tory. By-and-by we felt free to ask, " Are you of 
the English Wesleyan church?" 

Instantly he drew himself up to his full height and 
replied seriously and sonorously : — 

u I am a companion of all them that fear God!" 
Instinctively we gave him a grasp of the hand and 
were satisfied. When, after a journey of forty or 
fifty miles together, we parted, it was with mutual 
interest and hearty Godspeeds, each cheered and 
helped by the comradeship of the way. Doubtless 
we shall never meet again on earth, but this milestone 
in our Christian pilgrimage will ever stand. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

FORTY MILES AND TWO CHURCHES IN ONE DAY. 

BUT other fields are ripening, and the reapers are 
too few. " Two by two" the Master sent out 
his messengers. There is in this, doubtless, a higher 
wisdom than has yet been perceived. Many a lonely 
toiler in the world's great harvest field has been glad- 
dened by the coming of another, as was Paul by the 
coming of Titus. When, single-handed, one minister 
is toiling to reap the spiritual harvests in a county as 
large as one of our lesser states, he is cheered, some- 
times beyond measure, if, for a single day only, he 
can have counsel from another in his perplexities, and 
a helping hand in his toil. To such a grateful service 
the missionaries were appointed. 

It was a journey of two hundred and forty miles by 
rail, and fifty by stage. He was getting used to these 
"magnificent distances," and found them not as tire- 
some as formerly. And yet the pleasures of staging 
on the frontier are not those of a fully equipped, 
thorough-braced, four-horse Concord coach. Fifty 
miles over a dry and dusty prairie, under a scorching 

301 



302 Service in the King's Guards. 

midsummer sun, is not a particularly inspiring pros- 
pect with better accommodations than the old, cheap 
spring wagon which was in waiting for us, loaded with 
bags of grain and various merchandise, and with two 
worn-out horses hitched before it. Besides the driver 
there were three or four passengers, all needing to 
make the journey that day. The missionary's seat 
was one half a bag of oats. The driver had the other 
half. The bag was about even with the front end of 
the wagon box, alongside of which it lay, and our feet 
hung over in proximity to the horses' tails. Our 
fellow-travelers were mounted on other bags of grain 
behind us. If the comforts were not all that the 
minister could wish, they were more than equal to 
those of the others, and there was small chance for 
envy, unless indeed on the part of the poor horses. 
We were late in starting out, and found it conven- 
ient to rest and take dinner at the first little town, 
fifteen miles on our way. Little kindnesses and cour- 
tesies which were extended to the missionary at the 
hotel, though unexpected, were such as not unfre- 
quently met him in his missionary work. The ladylike 
hostess was not long in ascertaining that among her 
guests was a Christian minister. At once the best 
room in the house was placed at his service, while 
waiting, and its appointments had more of refinement 
than could have been expected in a town like that on 



Forty Miles and Two Churches in One Day. 303 

the unsubdued prairie. Of more importance in the 
character they reveal than in the gifts they bestow, 
such kindnesses leave in the hearts of those who share 
them a lasting memory. 

Dinner over, we proceeded, having left behind a 
part of the load of our overburdened team. More and 
more wild and unbroken, fewer and slighter the signs 
of civilization, as we got beyond the vicinity of the 
railroad, the great civilizer of these vast plains. Still, 
here and there, we discerned signs of human life, in 
the rude shanty and the growing grain of the isolated 
farmer. As the sun was sinking behind the horizon, 
we neared the hamlet which we sought. The ct town" 
was composed of one store, a blacksmith's shop, and 
a small house known as the hotel. At the latter we 
were expected to stop, and we soon learned that in it 
was to be held divine service on the coming Sunday 
morning. 

Between the small office and the dining room there 
were double doors, and these were thrown open as the 
hour for service approached. The rooms were well 
filled with an attentive congregation. We had been 
called here to organize a church, which we now 
proceeded to do, after which the sacraments were 
administered. 

To call a council in such a case seemed impractica- 
ble. There was but one church of our order within 



304 Service in the King's Guards. 

fifty miles, bat two within a hundred, and both of 
these were very weak and without a minister. In 
case a council had been called there could have been 
little hope that, in the pressing cares of the season, 
and with the difficulty of travel, a single delegate 
would have responded. We did not believe that Paul 
always called a council when he instituted the churches 
of Asia Minor. So the minister of this people, and 
the general missionary whom he had called for this 
purpose, went forward in what seemed the path of 
duty. 

In the afternoon we were to meet by appointment 
another congregation, miles away. The shortest way 
led through the bed of a lake which was quite ex- 
tended in the wet season, but now, under an August 
sun, was dry and covered with a rank growth of wild 
reeds and grasses, sometimes higher than the vehicle in 
which we rode. It was a romantic ride of decided 
interest. It brought us to a region of more mature 
settlement. Here were a goodly number of farmers 
of the thriftier class. True, they had no village, and 
were almost seventy miles from the nearest railroad 
station. A minister of another denomination, retired 
from active service, was in the thoughtful congrega- 
tion, which had gathered in a private house, and there 
was another who was ready to act as pastor. They 
desired the organization of a church, which we pro- 



Forty Miles and Two Churches in One Day, 305 

ceeded to form, and encouraged the brethren as best 
we could. 

The service over, we rode home with the minister, 
who lived four or five miles from the place of meet- 
ing, took supper with him and his family, and rested 
a little. We were twenty-five miles from the point 
where we might strike a stage next morning, and 
decided that it was best to go on. 

The night was dark, but by the help of the min- 
ister whose call had brought us hither, we made our 
journey across the unfenced prairie to the village on 
the stage route. Late, and tired, but glad at heart, 
we concluded our work of "forty miles and two 
churches in one day." Rest was sweet in an open 
and unfinished chamber, with strangers sleeping all 
about. Another "stage ride" of forty-five miles 
next day, and we had reached the railroad with its 
welcome homeward train. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 



AUTUMN MEETINGS. 



rj^HE long, delightful autumn was approaching, 
~^- the season of meetings of the local and 
general associations, of fellowship meetings and 
others in the older settled regions. The general 
meeting was a season of review, of stimulus and 
cheer, enlarged by the accession of churches and of 
helpers. It was held at the site of a frontier college, 
whose story was a volume in itself, and the laying 
of a corner stone was a part of the program. It was 
a privilege to visit its embryo library, and to listen 
in its class rooms. In one of these a translation 
from a classic author was rendered. It was an old 
story, but it came with peculiar freshness, illustrating 
by its ancient valor a motto worthy of the times 
and the work laid upon the Christian Church along 
the picket line of civilization. 

" The spears of the enemy are so many that they 
darken the light of heaven," said a scout before the 
battle of Marathon. 

"Very well," answered Miltiades, "then we will 
fight in the shade." 

306 



Autumn Meetings. 307 

To " fight in the shade " with the valorous Cap- 
tain of our salvation was glory and privilege enough 
to nerve the arm and fire the heart of every soldier 
of the cross at this meeting. 

"Thy saints, in all this glorious war, 
Shall conquer, though they die: 
They view the triumph from afar, 
And seize it with their eye." 

Nowhere have we heard a more vigorous discussion 
of the temperance question than here, and a mission- 
ary meeting of women, not large, but earnest, was 
a representative of the self-denial and the sanctified 
zeal and common sense of frontier churches, who 
see not an additional burden but a blessing and a 
help in practically remembering the words of the 
Lord Jesus, "It is more blessed to give than to 
receive." 

In returning, it was in our way to see something 
of more advanced methods in Christian education for 
the Indian than we had hitherto had the opportunity 
to observe. After a pleasant day in the company of 
missionaries we knew and loved, our team drew up 
at nightfall at the mission home at Santee agency, 
on the Nebraska side of the Missouri. 

The Ponca and Santee Indians are here, but this 
advanced school has received many other represent- 



308 Service in the King's Guards. 

atives from the forty thousand Sioux of the great 
Dakota reservations, with some from the Gros Ventres 
and the Manclans of the Upper Missouri. 

Our visit, though brief, was one of delight. Here 
we could bow in prayer at a family altar, remember- 
ing the labors of Riggs and Williamson into which 
their children are entering, with achievement already 
setting its seal to those labors of faith and hope. 
Here, in the " Bird's Nest," where the little ones 
are gathered, in the boys' school, and the girls' 
school, and the church, we find Indians without the 
" heredity of civilization and Christianity," but with 
the redemption of the new life in Christ Jesus. They 
are, in part, the selected pupils from various mission 
stations, sent here by the missionaries, and with the 
consent of the parents, for better opportunities than 
can be afforded them nearer their homes. 

Their progress, the result of years of toil and 
pains, is such as to justify a large hope for the seventy 
Indian tribes yet in absolute darkness, if the Church 
of Christ shall not too long neglect them. We visit 
the buildings where the Indian youth are instructed 
in agriculture and in trades ; we scan the course of 
theological study for the young preachers ; we sit 
with the older girls in their sewing room, and are 
shown by two dusky maidens the interesting details 
of the bread-making for the large family ; we sing 



Autumn Meetings. 309 

with the assembled school, led at the organ by a 
polished Christian gentleman with copper-colored 
skin ; we sit with interest in the recitation room, and 
witness the drill of the bright boys and girls in 
mathematics ; in walking about the grounds we greet 
some of the youth we have entertained in earlier 
days in our home in the church. One sweet little 
girl who runs to meet us is the granddaughter of 
the Indian woman, Elisabeth Winyan, who saved the 
lives of the missionaries in the Minnesota massacre 
of 1862. We made the acquaintance of this gentle 
girl when, as one of the earliest guests at our par- 
sonage, she with her teacher spent the night with 
us, en route from her home in the upper country to 
this school, and are glad indeed to see her again, 
happy and improving in her new world. . We inquire 
for the little silent maiden who visited us in the 
church, and who did not freeze in the blizzard which 
overtook the party, thanks to the experience, wisdom, 
and fortitude of their missionary conductor ; but she 
has gone on to Hampton, if we rightly understand. 

Long might we linger here with pleasure and profit, 
but time and work press, and we must go forward, by 
a circuitous and tiresome journey, with almost every 
variety of conveyance, till we reach our point of 
departure — home no longer, for the thought and the 
hope of home have vanished with the measureless 



310 Service in the King's Guards. 

needs of the work. But we are glad of this one brief 
respite in the year, for larger outlook from the emi- 
nence " whither the tribes go up," and we are 
refreshed while we remember that already this young 
association, amid its own want, has given, in the prov- 
idence of God, helpers to the " ends of the world," 
as well as to Mexico and Japan — to the f reedmen of 
the South and the aborigines at our doors. 

Not many weeks after we had the privilege of greet- 
ing a local association. In the smaller body, heart 
comes nearer to heart, and the spirit of God seems 
present in unusual measure. Entertaining a classmate 
in the person of a visiting ministerial brother, our 
talk at the tea table and around the fireside, though 
grave with the responsibilities and the toil of the pass- 
ing days, was cheered by great hopes for the work, 
and by sunshiny recollections of student days which 
gleam through the rifts of present environments. 

Next morning at the meeting we missed his face 
and wondered what could have kept him away. Later 
in the session we learned that he had departed, on 
an early freight train, for an adjoining town. And 
without a word of farewell or explanation ! 

In time that explanation came. Is it not too sad 
to tell? His son, a promising young lawyer, and a 
favorite candidate for judge in his county, was to 
conduct a suit regarding some land in dispute. Was 



Autumn Meetin gs. 311 

it an unhappy rumor or an undefined uneasiness 
which took the father suddenly from the midst of the 
meeting to the place whence the son bad mysteriously 
disappeared, with no word for the father he loved and 
trusted ? 

Months of terrible anxiety to his parents followed. 
A letter from the mother, catching at the straw of a 
possible clew to the discovery of the missing son, reads 
like the wail of an agonized soul. The whole country 
gradually became wrought up to sympathy with the 
parents, as the proofs of a diabolical murder, at first 
utterly unsuspected, were found. Months afterward 
the awful truth was verified. Overtaken alone, riding 
in his buggy towards the trial of the suit, the young 
man was murdered by his opponents in sight only 
of high heaven ; through the confession of one of 
the culprits, the fragments of his body were found, 
under the sod of the prairie where they were hidden. 

This tragedy had been enacted two weeks, when the 
father sat, cheery and unsuspicious of wrong, beside 
our board and hearth, a few miles distant. 

This appalling story had not yet its sequel. Before 
the courthouse, a few rods beyond the church and 
parsonage we had called ours, an outraged sense of 
justice executed " lynch law" on the miserable per- 
petrators of this crime. We were thankful to be 
spared the witness of that scene. 



312 Service in the King's Guards. 

Within a few months, the only surviving child of 
that missionary father, a student in college, yielded 
up his young life to disease, and the heart-broken 
wife and mother passed from a world which had 
brought her too great a weight of sorrow, to the 
beyond, where the mysteries of life shall be un- 
raveled. 

Another meeting of this season remains in our 
memory. Our work had been distant from the famous 
wheat fields of the North, and communication was 
difficult. At last, providentially, we were speeding 
northward along their eastern border. The names of 
counties lying alongside in Minnesota were suggestive : 
Lac-qui-parle, Yellow Medicine, Renville, bring back 
memories of Indian wars and massacre. Along this 
St. Peter's river, what lives have been lived ! What 
Christian heroism has consecrated these hills and val- 
leys and these river banks ! What hopes and fears 
and saintly aspirations have floated on this stream ! 
Across the river from a station we have passed, we are 
told that the treaty of peace in 1862 was made 
between the Indians and the government. We looked 
over there, and imagined that perhaps it was here, on 
the meadow this side the hills, or beyond those trees 
and slopes, that it was done. 

But the day draws to its close and we are still far 
from our destination. On into the gathering twilight 



Antzcmn Meetings. 313 

and darkness our train speeds. At a distance from 
the tracks, on either side, prairie fires light the hori- 
zon. Now, far away, so that only the sullen gleam on 
the smoke and the sky is visible ; oftener, so near 
that its swift advance appears like the movement of 
an army with torches. For nearly a hundred miles we 
pass onward with the speed of steam between two 
broken walls of fire. The train halts at the pictur- 
esque crossing of a stream and the brakeman calls out 
the name of its station, " Wild Rice." We note with 
pleasure in the light from the train that trees are there, 
and speed onward. 

The " Key City of the north," at last, and we are 
glad. u How large is it?" we ask ourselves. It is 
famous, so we guess at two or three thousand inhabit- 
ants. As we approach, our beacon is an electric 
light which gleams down on the city and surrounding 
country from its mast, more than two hundred feet 
high. We find brick blocks, the appliances of city 
life, and ten thousand inhabitants. The air is keen, 
reminding us that we are on the parallel of northern- 
most Maine. 

A drive by moonlight reveals the beauties of the 
winding Red River of the north, and brings us to the 
comfortable home of those we quickly come to regard 
as friends. Unexpectedly we are with the children of 
those we have known and loved away on the shores 
of Massachusetts Bay. 



314 Service in the King's Guards. 

At the church we find friends from Maine and Ver- 
mont, relatives, too, we think, if only we had time to 
trace the family links. Sunday morning there is the 
home missionary prayer meeting, a privilege we can 
never afford to miss. The church is not yet the ele- 
gant edifice that one day will rise here, but a comfort- 
able frontier sanctuary, ceiled, like many of the 
homes, with matched boards. It is simply but taste- 
fully furnished, and it contains one luxury. Beside 
the pulpit platform is a tiled fireplace, with a grate of 
glowing coal. What cozy chats, what hand-shakings, 
what foot- warmings, can it not testify to ! Before and 
between meetings we partake of its comfort, and 
rejoice in the sight of its cheer as the services proceed, 
and inwardly resolve that an open fire, in addition to 
the ordinary means of warmth, shall always appear in 
our inventory of church necessities — at least in such 
a climate as this. 

The meeting is the annual gathering of the ministers 
and churches along the Northern Pacific Railroad from 
the line of Western Minnesota to Central Montana. 
In private some of the brethren may have confessed 
their perplexities and occasional discouragements, and 
perhaps asked counsel ; but there is nothing depressing 
or complaining in the atmosphere of this meeting. 
The triumphant ring of the Apostle to the Gentiles we 
catch again in the utterance of his humble imitators 



Autumn Meetings. 315 

here. There is no call for pity. If any can hear the 
prayers and testimonies of this meeting and not envy 
this little company, we marvel at him. 

There is even thanksgiving that the crops are poor, 
and the price of wheat is low, though the church 
mortgages cannot be paid, and the building of new 
sanctuaries, so much needed, must be delayed. 

" It is not well for us to go forward too fast," said 
a brother. " Our churches and we too need yet to be 
kept in the valley of humiliation. We must learn to 
endure hardness, before our moral fiber can be tested. " 

Another said : " I wondered how that brother 
could come down here so cheery, and looking ^s 
though he had renewed his youth, until I remembered 
what his wife said to me when I was at his house. 

I said, ' Sister , how do you get along in this 

lonely place, without church privileges (her husband 
was a traveling missionary), and amid the hardships 
of a new country?' She replied, 'There is a little 
hill over there where I can go for solitary prayer.' So 
I understood the secret of the brother's power. His 
wife is at home praying for him." 

The brother referred to arose. "My wife," said 
he, "has not heard a gospel sermon for two years, 
and she looked forward with great interest to a trip to 
this meeting, where she hoped to worship in company 
with the brethren and sisters, and to enjoy their com- 



316 Service in the King's Guards. 

panionship. But the day before we were to leave 
home an accident occurred near us by which a young 
man was greatly injured. He was taken into our 
house ; she gave up her room to him, and she is now 
nursing the poor man, and caring for the broken 
bones that will keep him there, if indeed he recover, 
for two months to come." 

The general testimony is all in one line. Each one 
the Master strengthens for his work ; each one is glad 
he came to the frontier ; to each the comforts of the 
divine Presence are greater than the toils of life in 
service. The sermon, the Sunday-school, with its 
music led by cabinet organ, flute, and violin, the 
sweet communion service of the afternoon, and the 
stirring missionary addresses of the evening, crowd 
the day with precious memories. 

At daylight next morning we are on our homeward 
way. Now we see something of the beautiful fields 
and the vast farms of which we had heard, but our 
joy is in the seed-sowing of the Master's servants we 
have met, and in sure knowledge of the promise, " In 
due season we shall reap, if we faint not." 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 

u INASMUCH AS YE HAVE DONE IT UNTO ONE OF THE 
LEAST OF THESE MY BRETHREN, YE HAVE DONE 
IT UNTO ME." 

A CALL comes from the southland. A hundred 
miles by rail and fifty miles by stage and 
buckboard bring the missionary to the land of 
promise. The last twenty miles is on a buckboard, 
sharing the seat made for one only, with the driver, 
an Irishman overflowing with mother wit. The first 
thirty miles after leaving the railroad brings the trav- 
elers to the highest eminence in a vast region, whence 
the outlook, taking in the whole circle of the horizon, 
is grand indeed. 

From that mount of vision a very gradual descent 
is made over lands most beautiful, until, near the end 
of the journey, a slightly depressed valley of surpass- 
ing beauty and promise is entered. Into this good 
land an enterprising people have found their way, 
and already it is nearly all occupied. In a few years 
it is almost sure to be not only a region of beauty, but 
of wealth as well. 

The day was drawing to a close when the Irish 

317 



318 Service in the King's Guards. 

driver dropped the missionary at the door of a 
farmer, whose hospitality he was to share for the 
night. Though a stranger, and unexpected, he was 
kindly welcomed to this home by the way. The host 
had acres broad and fertile. He had just completed 
the harvesting of nearly two hundred acres of flax, 
the seed of which, when threshed, he expected to 
haul thirty miles to the nearest railway station and 
sell for about one dollar per bushel. 

The house contained three small rooms below and 
two and a half in the chamber. There were horses 
and cattle and hogs and grain outside the house — 
enough to lead one to expect conveniences and com- 
forts within. But the era of the latter seemed not to 
have yet arrived. At nightfall, when the work of the 
day was over, and the hired men gathered about the 
table with the family and their guest for supper, there 
was food in plenty, but only three or four chairs for 
eight or ten persons. Those not accommodated by 
the chairs sat on boxes and a rude bench. When 
bedtime came the guest was lighted to his low cham- 
ber by an elderly man, who had for days been follow- 
ing his mule team with the plow, turning up a black, 
dry soil. The first instinct was to find a chair on 
which to lay the clothing of which the guest was 
about to divest himself. But a glance revealed the 
fact that the onlv furniture of the room besides the 



"Inasmuch." 319 

bed was the iron part of an unorganized plow. In a 
moment his clothes were on those irons. He had at 
first supposed that the good plowman was to leave 
him when the way to the room had been shown. But 
no ; he was to be bedfellow for the night, and not 
without other " f ellow-creatures " for company, who 
had shared with the dusty plowman the sheets for 
many a night since they were fresh. Shutting his 
eyes and setting his teeth, the missionary lay down, 
seeking comfort in other reflections. The coming of 
the next morning was u a consummation devoutly to 
be wished." 

The " call" to come to the help of the minister here 
had been so urgent that the missionary had hastened 
to respond to it without sending notice of coming. 
It was now Saturday morning and he must seek the 
minister, who lived on his "claim" three or four miles 
away, and spend the day in disseminating the appoint- 
ments for the coming Sabbath. The " bishop in 
charge" received him with Christian hospitality, and 
the two spent a busy day, going up and down the 
valley, giving notice of the services, and conscious of 
a growing interest in the people, whom we found, on 
the whole, to possess much intelligence. 

Sunday morning dawned hopefully. The morning 
service was held about five or six miles distant from 
the home of the minister, in the dining room of a 



320 Service in the King's Guards. 

country inn — the best and only place to be had. 
The same strong contrasts between the narrowness 
and limitations of the place of meeting and the 
brightness and thoughtfulness of the congregation 
were here, as everywhere, to be found. We were 
especially impressed with the ability and culture of 
the chorister, who read music at sight, and led the 
singing in a manner worthy of a city choir. We were 
strengthened and encouraged at once as we joined in 
the service of praise which he led. The congregation 
packed the house and gave the Word a most sympa- 
thetic hearing. 

At four o'clock in the afternoon many of our morn- 
ing hearers, with others, came together for a second 
service at a farmhouse, three or four miles in another 
direction. Again we sang under the same delightful 
leadership as in the morning ; again the Word was 
preached with a good hearing ; and at the close of 
the sermon a church was organized and the sacra- 
ments administered. The people seemed blessed and 
the ministers were encouraged. 

The services concluded, we returned to the home of 
the pastor, to share a second time the hospitality of 
his interesting family, with whom we had tarried the 
night before. 

The preacher was a companionable, intelligent 
Christian man. His wife, with the two younger 



"Inasmuch." 321 

children, had gone to spend a time with the eldest 
son, a young man in business in an adjoining state. 
When all were at home the family consisted of 
father, mother, and seven children. They were living 
in a sod house of two rooms, one serving the triple 
purpose of kitchen, dining room, and sleeping room ; 
the other was the apartment of the parents, and 
especially the minister's study. In this apartment 
we spent our two nights, sharing one of the beds it 
contained with the pastor. The eldest daughter of 
the family, a most ladylike girl of about seventeen, 
occupied another, with two of the children, while the 
two large boys slept in the kitchen. 

The limitations of that sod house were not the 
saddest features of the case. The shoes on the 
minister's feet — the only pair he had — were such as 
an ordinary farmer would throw away. His panta- 
loons, originally of a double-threaded " shoddy" 
cloth, were not only threadbare, but on each knee there 
was a hole as large as a man's hand. Thus clad, this 
good man was compelled to preach, or not to preach 
at all. In this clothing he rode about with us through 
the community on Saturday ; with these garments he 
attended the services on the Sabbath. The queenly 
daughter had not clothing suitable to wear to church 
by daylight, as the father told me apologetically, as 
a reason for her absence from the Sunday service, 



322 Service in the King's Guards. 

When meeting was held under cover of night she 
would go. 

Such facts seem too personal and sacred for 
narration. It is far enough from a personal gratifi- 
cation to write them. But when the self-denying 
missionary is abte to endure them, surely Christian 
people who live in comfort ought to know how fares it 
with their brethren. Our hearts ached for this pastor. 
Before leaving him we wrote to the secretaries in New 
York the facts which our brother would not state, 
asking for his relief ; and when we reached home, 
unwilling to wait the needed time for the response, 
were only too glad to divide our clothing with the 
needy family, and with the help of a few neighbors, 
to send them a comfortably filled box of such things 
as we could command, with express charges paid. It 
would have been a greater pleasure to send them 
much more. 

Many of the sufferings of the servants of God 
in the hard places of the earth are written only in 
the record which is on high. Of the frontier settle- 
ments, often it may be said, as here, that the money 
of the settlers is absorbed in the expenses of moving 
and entering their lands ; that in a great number of 
cases where appearance of means is deceiving, the 
cattle and the crops are mortgaged in advance, the 
interest paid sometimes reaching as high as fifty per 



"Inasmuch." 323 

cent for ready money. If, in exceptional cases, 
there is money, it is generally in the hands of specu- 
lators who have little or no interest in religious 
matters. Often there is absolutely nothing to be 
done but for the preacher in such a field to go for- 
ward, trusting in God and the Home Missionary 
Society, and hoping for better times. 



CHAPTER XL. 



THREE DAYS TOGETHER. 



rT^HE week had been a trying one; physically, and 
-*- in the demands it had made for sympathy and 
counsel. The missionary had reached home Friday 
afternoon, longing for rest. Saturday morning he was 
really ill with a h,eavy cold. Propped up with pillows, 
all the morning he dictated to his wife as amanuensis. 
One epistle bore counsel to a minister in want of 
work ; another gave suggestion to a laborer in the 
gospel who was very much wanted in two or three 
places at once ; a third sought to cheer and encourage 
a church which was ready to falter, because, after 
repeated disappointments, a minister it loved and 
cherished had resigned, on the threshold of his work, 
to accept a call from a larger and stronger church at 
the east ; a fourth asked the superintendent, in behalf 
of this church, to seek them another pastor without 
delay; another was addressed to a Christian layman, 
thinking of giving up his secular business, and devot- 
ing his entire time to reaping in these perishing fields, 
white for the harvest. A Sunday-school in New 

324 



Three Days Together. 325 

England, gratefully remembered for its good deeds, 
wanted to know what to do with its home missionary 
money this year. It was told that the problem is, 
not to find a needy place, but to choose from many, 
and that the money it proposed to send should be 
well and wisely applied. Then a letter had to go to 
the Sunday-school secretary, telling him of two 
country churches organized within the last eight days, 
which were in need of Sunday-school lesson helps and 
libraries, and asking what could be done for these 
places, with their homeless churches and their children 
and young people, with no reading for the long winter 
which was before them. Last must be written a sor- 
rowful negative to a ministerial brother who wanted a 
supply for his pulpit for a Sabbath, in order that he 
might minister to a church in need elsewhere. " I 
hope you will be able to go," wrote the general mis- 
sionary, "but I am wanted in two or three places 
elsewhere on that day, and cannot meet your call. ,, 

These letters, every one written, not to strangers 
but to friends beloved, whose trials we knew, and to 
churches for whom we had wrought in love and 
prayer, were ready for the mail. 

A hundred miles northward a pastorless church 
awaited in trust the promise of a pulpit supply for 
the morrow. " I am not well enough to go alone," 
said the minister. So the vision of quiet rest for one 



326 Service in the King's Guards. 

vanished and together we took the train. A scorching 
sun and a cloudless sky indicated midsummer, though 
it was mid-autumn. The wrap it was not safe to go 
without was a burden, and the umbrella which inter- 
cepted the rays of the sun hardly mitigated the 
extreme heat. With the ponderous lullaby of the 
train, and the suspension of activities, came rest. 
Thank God for the "rest by the way" which always 
comes with the need for it ! Refreshed, as the sun 
sank toward the horizon, we gazed from the open rear 
door of the train over the beauties of the valley we 
were ascending. Not the New England river valley, 
with its broad intervales, its meadows, its graceful 
elms, its skirting uplands, its hillsides brilliant with 
the changing hues of autumn. Not a tree in sight 
for a hundred miles, hardly a curve in the river which, 
narrow and without affluents, traverses this upland 
plain on its way to join the rolling current of the 
Missouri. 

But what broad and fertile acres ! What gently 
undulating farms stretch away from the track on 
either side — that track which, straight as an arrow, 
shows its beautiful perspective behind us till it loses 
itself in the vanishing point on the far horizon. 

What signs of progress in cultivation and civiliza- 
tion have two years wrought in this region ! Small 
but comparatively comfortable houses with brick chim- 



Three Days Together. 327 

neys; increased acreage under the plow ; stacks of 
hay and grain ; once in a while, a good barn ; now 
and again, a steam thresher at work ; here and there, 
a man riding a sulky plow, which is turning neat fur- 
rows behind the patient horses. 

The railroad towns are ten or fifteen miles apart. 
To a stranger their new and unfledged look might 
be unattractive ; but we know their history. Where 
a church has been built, even though it have neither 
tower nor any other sign of church architecture, we 
think of the struggles and self-denials of the min- 
ister and the people, which make it beautiful in the 
sight of Him in whose honor it has been reared. 

So we went on, until the sun sank in the west 
with the same effect as a sunset at sea. We talked 
of entertainment, not knowing what might await us. 
The wife, weary, and fearing possible hardships for 
the ailing preacher, begged to try a hotel. But no ; 
we would trust the people and the Lord. Lo ! the 
luxury of spring bed and hair mattress which was in 
waiting, added to the kind and self-denying hospi- 
tality which has never failed us anywhere, made this 
a red-letter day in our calendar. 

Sunday morning dawns brightly, but ere time for 
service the sky is- overcast, the chill north wind is 
rising, clouds of dust are whirling down the streets, 
the tumbleweed turns its rapid somersaults along the 



328 Service in the King's Guards. 

roadside, and the shiver of coming winter is in our 
veins. We gather in the upper hall, used for court- 
room, minstrel show, and what not, during the week — 
the only place which the little flock have for Sabbath 
worship. The chill, which is our first sensation on 
entering, gives place to reacting warmth after a little, 
and when a small bouquet of pansies, geraniums, and 
sweet alyssum in a graceful vase is placed by loving 
hands before the unsightly box turned upon a table 
which forms the pulpit, we see no more the rude box 
and its ugly black commercial lettering, for the sweet- 
ness and the glow of the flowers. The sermon is sym- 
pathetic, but not depressing. Both cheer and sympa- 
thy are needed, and it is strange to feel how this 
comes in the simple presence of friends whom the 
shepherdless people trust, and to whom they are not 
afraid to make known their obstacles and discourage- 
ments. They speak of the impossibility of building 
a house for the Lord until they have a pastor, the 
danger that their little number will be scattered 
through discouragement, and the weariness of their 
long months of asking and waiting in vain. 

In the congregation and in the Bible-class sit a 
mother and father. They have brought their four 
young children, as usual, to the meeting. In rain 
or shine, never late, this family appears before the 
Lord, coming seven and a half miles every Sunday 



Three Days Together. 329 

morning, remaining through morning service and 
Sunday-school, eating their cold lunch in the wagon 
as they return, and going two or three miles beyond 
their home to another Sunday-school made up of 
their country neighbors, whose only Sabbath privilege 
it is. They do not alight at the door of their home 
until the night is drawing on. 

"It is the hardest day of the week, isn't it?" we 
said. 

" Yes," replies the hard-working mother, with a 
smile, " but we have been able to be always here." 

Before he goes homeward at the close of the 
service, the visiting missionary gathers the leading 
men about him — four or five — to consult as to the 
interests of the church. As the afternoon wears on, 
reaction comes with rest, and the minister says to 
his wife, " 1 do not feel able to preach this evening. 
What can you do with the service? " 

"Nothing; but you will feel better by-and-by. It 
will be a dark and gusty evening. Only a few can be 
present. There is a cabinet organ, and a few singers 
will be there. You can extemporize a brief service 
and dismiss the little company." 

But as we enter, there is light, and cheer of fire. 
A larger congregation has come together than we 
expected. From two or three miles away come the 
young people, who lead the music, and lead it well. 



330 Service in the King's Guards. 

Parents and children, professional men, a sojourning 
judge, drop in. The audience grows. The blessing 
of God is there. The familiar address of the mis- 
sionary falls on sympathetic ears. He is strengthened 
for his work, and in his work, and when the evening 
is over, his illness lias almost departed. There are 
warm farewells next morning when we take our 
departure ere the sun has risen. How glad we shall 
be to see these people again ! How our hope rises 
that God will soon send them a pastor ! How we 
are enabled to look beyond their present discourage- 
ments to the time when, the work of the Lord having 
been established here, children's children shall rise up 
to pronounce blessing on these Christian pioneers ! 

On the train there is one woman besides the minis- 
ter's wife. She is in tears, and the indications of 
inward agony convulse her frame. She holds an open 
telegram in her hand. Drawn as by a magnet, and 
yet, fearing to intrude upon her grief, we approach. 
But in this new land friends are few, and real sym- 
pathy is never repulsed. Soon her story is revealed. 
An aged Christian father at the east, in the previous 
spring, had required this loving daughter's care. Four 
months she left her invalid husband on the western 
farm, where he is regaining his health, and nursed her 
father through pneumonia, and weeks of convales- 
cence, to leave him two weeks ago in health, when 



Three Days Together. 331 

she returned to her home. On Saturday night she 
received a telegram summoning her again to her 
father's bedside. Thirty-five miles from the railroad, 
she has been driven in to take this sunrise Monday 
morning train. A moment before we entered the car 
we saw her calmly at the ticket office. Now she is 
here with the dispatch received just as the train 
started, announcing that the father she had so loved 
and attended has entered into the rest whither the 
mother had long before preceded. In the freshness 
of her grief it is a comfort to find that she knows the 
only Source of help. A long, sad journey is before 
her, with scarce the hope that she may be able to look 
on the loved countenance in death, and the certainty 
that the old home, hallowed by long associations, 
must now pass into stranger hands. How sad this 
world is, except for the brightness that streams into 
it from above ! But what solace there is in Christian 
friendship ! We do not know this woman's name, nor 
the denomination of Christians, with whom she feels 
most at home. Unless by inference, she knows not 
ours. Yet we are u no more strangers and foreigners, 
but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house- 
hold of God." 

Without, the scene is in strange contrast with the 
oppressive heat of two days before. The cold north- 
ern blast is driving the sleet against the car windows, 



332 Service in the King's Guards. 

and the snow is whitening the landscape^ We turn to 
our papers. A leading editorial in an able secular 
journal treats of "The Strangers Within our Gates," 
the phenomenal increase of population which marks 
our recent history, the longing for friendly and kindly 
intercourse, the long repression of loneliness, the 
heartsickness of the early clays in a strange land, the 
task of incorporating and assimilating these multiply- 
ing accretions. " The wholesome social influence of 
the churches," it says, i' is probably the most power- 
ful factor in making the newcomers at home with 
their new surroundings." But this, with all other 
factors, scarcely does more than disclose " the vast 
proportions of the social need." 

Out in the snow and slush at length we must go. 
One square through the storm, we hear a shout, and 
turn to see a man rushing as if for dear life up the 
street, and another close behind him. Is it a fugitive 
from justice, fleeing, and almost overtaken? we ask 
ourselves as they flash past us. A telltale jet of 
smoke from a building opposite corrects our mistake. 
"Fire!" in a city where well-drilled fire companies 
and steam fire engines are on the ground at once is 
one thing ; in a frontier city of boards, with an undis- 
ciplined horde of volunteer firemen, no engine, and 
an untried water supply, it is another. 

We escape the gathering crowd and take refuge in 



Three Days Together. 333 

the post office, now deserted by all but one woman. 
Every other business door on the street is already 
locked, and its owner is at the fire. Clouds of smoke 
and excited shouts assail us as we take our two days' 
mail from the box and read : — 

"I was interested in the disposition you made of 
the hymn books I sent you," says, in substance, the 
letter of one who signs herself, U A Working Woman.'" 
U I thought I would put my tithes together, so as to 
help that church before winter comes on. The secre- 
tary has dollars, subject to your order." 

How the heart bounds at remembrance of the church 
to* be helped by this woman's self-denials ! It is a 
sanctuary of rough boards on the prairie, shrunk by the 
summer's sun, and now admitting the whistling winds 
and the driving snow, with its seats of boards laid on 
nail kegs, and the carpenter's bench still in the corner, 
waiting for means and workmen to render it more 
comfortable. Here is a message of substantial help 
and cheer. 

But we are already at our own door, thanking God, 
as many times before, for the privilege of laboring in 
this vineyard. 



CHAPTER XLI. 



A SONG. — A MIRAGE. 



AN enterprising young student who is doing mis- 
sionary work at a new county seat is urged to 
look at the wants of another and newer place. The 
discoveries of his last visit he makes known to the 
missionary, and urges that he hasten to meet the 
needs of the promising young town. 

Soon we are on our way thither, two hundred a*nd 
thirty miles by rail, and thirty or forty miles by a 
cheap spring wagon loaded down with bags of meal 
and bundles of twine for the use of the farmer on the 
" self -binding " harvesting machines. 

The blazing midsummer sun, the dried and heated 
prairie, the riding on a "stage," which is scarcely 
better than going afoot, are enough to lengthen the 
journey and make one glad to get to its end. After 
watching the shanties which along several miles indi- 
cated the approach to the new town, the missionary 
drew up at the door of the frontier hotel, and received 
a civil and not unfriendly welcome. There was the 
office, dining room, kitchen, and small sleeping room 
on the lower floor ; above, an open and unfinished 



334 



A Song. — A Mirage. 335 

chamber, containing six or eight beds, and one corner 
partitioned off by an old rag carpet. The beds were 
filled by what the boys called " prairie feathers." 
These "feathers" were not common straw, — that 
was a luxury not yet to be had, — but common, wiry 
prairie hay. The " extra room "behind the rag carpet 
was assigned to the missionary, who was glad to find 
even such comfort in a place so new. 

It was not far from four o'clock in the afternoon 
when he alighted from the stage. Not long after, the 
wind, which had been blowing from the south, veered 
to the north. Soon dark clouds shut out the sun, the 
heavens grew weird and the air clamp and chilly. As 
the sun went down behind the clouds, the gathering 
darkness, the treeless landscape, the dried and with- 
ered prairie grass on which were set the few new 
shanties, used mostly for the double purposes of 
dwellings and lawyers' offices — all conspired to de- 
press the spirit, while awaking the deepest sympathy 
for those who had come to make their homes and seek 
their fortunes amid such scenes. 

The burdensome sadness was the mood of but a 
few moments. From the little shanty across the 
street, anything but cheery in outward aspect, came 
strains of music which gladdened the heart. A few 
strains on the organ, touched by a skillful hand, 
reached the ear, and then the cultivated tones of a 
woman's voice, singing with rare pathos and power, — 



336 Service in the King's Guards. 

" Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, 
It is not night if thou be near! 
Oh, let no earthborn cloud arise 
To hide thee from thy servant's eyes." 

The power of these precious lines of Keble assumed 
new and precious augmentation in that instant. We 
had heard them many times before, in elegant churches 
on fine avenues in the great cities of the east, but 
never with such heavenly sweetness and divine sug- 
gestiveness as now. Instantly the chill without and 
around, and the weird black heavens above, were for- 
gotten. Heaven was near. 

" Sun of my soul, thou Saviour dear, 
It is not night if thou be near ! " 

The very barrenness of life and nature around gave 
unwonted attractiveness to the riches of divine grace, 
as suggested by the Christian thought soaring forth on 
wings of sweetest melody from that humble cabin 
home across the way. 

The next morning found the preacher with some 
anxiety for the effect of the service to be held. He 
was surrounded by entire strangers. In this embryo 
county seat there was yet neither house of worship, 
schoolhouse, nor hall. By the courtesy of a young 
lawyer the congregation were to meet in his office for 
the second religious service ever held in the place. 



A Song. — A Mirage. 337 

The impressions made that day might have much to 
do in determining the religious trend and history of 
the town. 

By the welcome partition of the rag carpet the 
preacher was shut in for prayer and meditation in 
preparation for the coming hour of worship. Wait- 
ing there, under a deep sense of his own weakness, 
with the recurring question, " Who is sufficient for 
these things ? " he was again cheered and strength- 
ened by another hymn of aspiration. As on the 
night before, so now, the blessing came when least 
expected. 

In conditions which would depress many another 
housekeeper, the good landlady of the house, amid 
her morning cares, was relieving her heart and 
strengthening her hand by singing, — 

"Jesus, lover of my soul, 

Let me to thy bosom fly, 
While the nearer waters roll, 

While the tempest still is high. 
Hide me, O my Saviour, hide, 

Till the storm of life is past; 
Safe into the haven guide; 

Oh, receive my soul at last ! " 

The familiar lines had a rare benediction for the 
heart of the waiting missionary. How vividly they 



338 Service in the King's Guards. 

brought to mind the helps of God's great love in 
Christ for all the weary and heavy laden of earth ! 
The heavens bent over him, and the " God of all 
comfort " seemed near, while the divine Advocate 
with men took of the things of Christ to reveal them 
to the soul. To be a missionary then was to enjoy 
the rarest privilege of earth. 

When the hour of service came the message of 
divine mercy was in his heart. To speak was a relief 
rather than an irksome duty. He met the people in 
the lawyer's office with pleasure, and they gave earnest 
attention to the Word. 

After the service of the morning he rode nine or 
ten miles over the prairie, and at four o'clock in the 
afternoon spoke again, to a good congregation, in 
the open space of a farmer's granary. 

When Monday morning dawned upon him he was 
some twenty or twenty-five miles from the nearest 
railroad station, which was the county seat of an 
adjoining county. Seated beside a farmer in his lumber 
wagon, the drive was not without interest. There 
were, on either hand, some far-reaching landscapes of 
unbroken prairie. There were also many new-made 
homes, surrounded by beautiful fields of grain, some 
of it already cut and in the shock ; some, still waving, 
ripening, and waiting for the coming reaper. 

Of the phenomena of the mirage on these great 



A Song, — A Mirage. 339 

plains he had heard much, but now witnessed one 
most remarkable. Approaching a town eight or ten 
miles distant, which commonly would have been 
hardly perceptible, it was seen lifted up into bright 
and beautiful prominence. It was situated on a flat 
prairie, but it now seemed to be on a hillside with a 
slight incline, and only two or three miles away. The 
buildings seemed higher, and the village more city- 
like than was actually the case. As it was approached, 
the two or three miles lengthened into eight or ten, 
the appearance gradually changed, and the mirage 
vanished. 



CHAPTER XLIL 



MULTIPLES. 



ON a winter's day the minister was at the first 
schoolhouse in which he ministered in this new 
land, pursuant to a call to organize a church and 
ordain a pastor. It was a part of his first parish. 
Why this movement, on the part of a portion of that 
little church of eight members, within three years? It 
seemed in those first months of pastorate that at 
least twenty-five years would be needed in order to 
show substantial results of labor in such a field as 
that. Now what is the story, in this brief space of 
time? 

Natural growth and one blessed far-reaching revival 
in that village church had increased its numbers to 
sixty members, and the church, with a parsonage, 
prayed and wrought into being by another minister's 
wife, was out of debt, except what it owed to the 
church and parsonage building society. 

In the judgment of those who had wrought here 
from the beginning, the time had come for a second 
church organization on the prairie. That at the vil- 

340 



Multiples. 341 

lage was strong enough to stand by itself, and another 
in the country parish could start out with the hope of 
soon being independent, and of reaching many who 
would not go to the village. A small council was 
gathered, and the church was organized with thirty 
members, who had been dismissed, at their own 
request, for this purpose, from the village church, 
which retains an equal membership. 

" With our staff we passed over this Jordan, and 
now we are become two bands." 

Soon there was a new church building in the rural 
parish, which became a center of good for a large com- 
munity of farmers. In time a neat parsonage rose 
up beside it. 

This is not all. It was the privilege of the missionary 
not only to assist in the organization of this second 
church, but at the same time to lay ordaining hands 
on the head of one of the eight original members 
called by the unanimous voice of these, his neighbors 
and friends, to serve them in the new pastorate. 
We had long known his fitness and the divine call to 
him, and for nearly a year past he had given himself 
almost exclusively to study and to Christian work. 
This was the beginning of a career of singular conse- 
cration and usefulness. 

Another of that first little band of eight was already 
serving in the Christian ministry, in a county not very 



342 Service in the King's Guards. 

far away, which before he went to it was practically 
destitute. It was early in that first summer, that in our 
little cabin the minister had laid before this brother 
the conviction that God was calling him to this serv- 
ice ; but, with a high ideal of the qualifications 
needed, he was not yet ready to entertain the thought. 
In time the providential indications came to be too 
plain to be disregarded ; and in a visit we were privi- 
leged to make in the following year to the hospitable 
home which had been our first shelter its master and 
mistress gave us the great joy of knowing that they 
were ready to follow the unmistakable call. Soon 
they removed to the destitute field, and gave them- 
selves with rare fidelity and success to its spiritual 
culture. A circuit of five communities, miles apart, 
was supplied with the Word by this brother, while his 
wife led the temperance and missionary work. Three 
churches have since grown out of these labors, with 
a church edifice and a parsonage, and the end is not 
yet. 

A third member of that first church of eight 
members was afterwards licensed to preach, having 
exchanged his work as a teacher and superintendent 
of schools for more exclusively Christian work, 
because of the vast field in perishing need of more 
laborers. The fourth and only remaining man of that 
little band is still, as at the first, a deacon, though 



Multiples. 343 

now in the second church. A younger brother who 
came to the country subsequently and became a mem- 
ber of this church, after using his spiritual gifts and 
his fine voice in lay work, which proved most effective, 
decided to make full preparation for the ministry, 
and is pursuing a four years' course of study in a 
theological seminary and at the same time supplying 
a suburban pulpit. 

Two or more of the boys of that country Sunday- 
school are in college, with the Christian ministry in 
view. 

Such are a few of the results that can be tabulated 
as growing out of the founding and early history of 
one weak church in a new community in the west, in a 
brief space of time. Many multiples of these begin- 
nings are already setting in motion other waves of 
influence for good that can be measured only on the 
shores of eternity. This church would be far enough 
from claiming to be a model, either in its collective 
life or the individual life of its members. Still further 
from such a claim would be its ministry, sowing the 
seed in weakness and sometimes in discouragement 
and lack of faith. 

But the promises and the providence of God are over 
all our work, and we know not which is great and 
which is small. Let us do it faithfully, " and not pre- 
sume to fret because 'tis little." And when the king- 



344 Service in the King's Guards. 

doms of the world shall have become the kingdom of 
our Lord, and we "join the everlasting song," our 
ascriptions of praise shall be to Him who was, and is, 
and is to come. 

" Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto thy 
name give glory." 






V 



